nan | 楠木

Saw (2004) was brilliant for its originality. The concept was innovative, the twists were fresh, and the plot was wickedly sick but also mind probing. It will never be reckoned as a masterpiece, nonetheless, it will probably become a cult favorite.
Saw II (2005), was unsatisfying. My main complaint was that it had too many characters “playing the game” and therefore too little character development. Most of the characters were dead before we knew much about them, whereas in the original, the two main characters feel much more alive. Still, the film was on par in extending the whole concept of the original, and bore one or two clever twists of its own.
With Saw III (2006), the third installment in this grotesque series tries to do several things. First, it tries to go back to the original’s footing, investing more time in character building and reserving some key twists until the very end; second, it more or less tries to tie the previous films together to form a continuous story, employing many flashbacks to lay out the background or the conclusion of “games” played out in the other two films.
Running at close to 2 hours, the film is quite a bit longer than its predecessors, and it feels that way too. The tempo is not constantly in high gear, which is a deliberate choice by the makers, but it doesn’t exactly achieve the full story telling and character developing goal. I was also quite unimpressed with the acting overall – which seriously hinders character development – but Jigsaw was of course the exception. He’s stranded to a bed yet he still steals every scene he’s in.
The “games” played this time around are just as sick, if not more so. However, they are not as interesting as the ones in the other films, mostly because the psychological conflict is unconvincing. In the previous films, you had to face a huge sacrifice to “win” and get out; in this film that dilemma is none-existent most of the time, mostly because the guy playing the “game” is not the one who’s suffering. On more than one occasion, some unlucky person suffered a very unpleasant death while the “player” just walks out afterwards. Well, that’s not very challenging.
In the spirit of the series, the ending has a few twists built in, and there’s always a cliffhanger serving as trailer-teaser for the next installment. However, the ending twist, although not entirely predictable, was not surprising enough to have that shock factor. And the teaser just feels lame.