Movie Review--Saw V

"Vengeance can change a person.  Make you into something you never thought you were capable of being.  But unlike you, I've never killed anyone.  I give people a chance."
--Jigsaw, Saw V

"You can dispense justice and give people a chance to value their lives in the same moment."
--Jigsaw, Saw V

"I assume nothing."
--Jigsaw, Saw V


Finally, it's time to resume my reviews of the presently existing Saw films (minus the third one, which I have not viewed other than isolated scenes)!  I didn't want to wait all the way until a time nearer to October 27th--and the scheduled release date of Saw: Legacy--to continue reviewing the remaining movies, so I recently decided to just leap back in.


Production Values

The camera filters seem to change with each (or at least every other) Saw movie, and the aesthetic for Saw V successfully captures more realism than that of Saw IV, which often appeared to possess a strange greenish hue over everything.  As far as visuals go, really, there's not much CGI in the entire franchise--so far, at least, as this year's Saw: Legacy may change that.  The quick montages of multiple angles for the same event remain, but obviously they are part of the series that has stayed since the early days.

Tobin Bell was amazing, as expected.  The gravity, charisma, chills, principles, and control exuded by his character are on full display in this film, with an entire seven minute flashback scene excellently showcasing exactly what makes Jigsaw so unique, thoughtful, and imposing.  Costas Mandylor did great playing the psychopathic detective Hoffman, revealed to be Jigsaw's successor at the end of the previous film.  Not many of the other characters besides a certain FBI agent are developed thoroughly or ever ascend beyond the generic roles they have, but the key characters--Jigsaw, Hoffman, and Strahm--each offer exactly what the story intended.

Charlie Clouser composed a fitting score, as usual, with the final scene accompanied by the latest iteration of his classic Zepp theme as per tradition, enhancing an already fantastic conclusion.  The rest of the audio is handled well.

Now, the traps in Saw V are objectively simpler than the ones from previous movies.  It is largely obvious what the solutions are and how the traps function, so conceptual creativity did diminish somewhat when it comes to the traps everyone flocks to see.


Story

In the opening scene an unnamed man awakens on a table, his neck inside a locked collar holding it to the table, his arms bound and chained but still movable--and a pendulum armed with a blade overhead.  A TV activates to show the face of Jigsaw's puppet, the playing video explaining that the man will need to allow both of his hands to be crushed to release the collar around his neck.

Then the game begins.  Although the man eventually competes his test by crushing both hands, the pendulum continues to descend.  And an eye stares at him through a hole in a door.

Then the end of Saw VI is shown, as agent Strahm finds Jigsaw's corpse and is shut within a room by an unseen person.  Separated from backup, he travels further into the structure--only to be assaulted and sedated by pig face and to recover consciousness to find his head inserted into a box that will fill with water.  There is no tape, and thus no escape.  This trap is intended to kill him without offering a chance to survive.

But to the surprise of Hoffman, Strahm survives due to a very clever self-inflicted medical procedure.  The characters start to orient themselves towards their personal goals in this movie and the ones that extend into the two following films.  Strahm begins to suspect Hoffman of being a Jigsaw accomplice; Jill Kramer receives a box from John's lawyer held from her until his death; Hoffman is promoted in a police ceremony.  He delivers an oration ironically praising the sacredness of life and how we should cherish it

Hoffman also notices a letter under his computer keyboard addressed to him which reads "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE."  Viewers do not actually learn the author of this note until Saw: The Final Chapter.

(SPOILERS critical to the movie are dispersed throughout the following parts of the story section.)

In a separate and isolated location, a group of men and women, five in total, awaken in another community game.  One of them seems to know the identities, occupations, and lives of the others, and not only are the others puzzled at his knowledge, but they also wonder why they are inside traps if Jigsaw's death was broadcasted on the news recently.  They endure five waves of traps, losing members along the way, before they come to know what demons from the past bind them together.

Meanwhile, Strahm conducts Internet and archive research and discovers that Hoffman had a sister who was killed by a man named Seth Baxter, her boyfriend.  A newspaper article accessed online says Jigsaw killed him.  According to the information he unearths, Seth received a 25 year sentence but a technicality reduced it to five, and it appears that Hoffman imitated Jigsaw's methods but created an unbeatable game . . . much to the disappointment and irritation of he real Jigsaw.

During a time that seems set before the events of the first movie, Jigsaw temporarily kidnapped Hoffman and interviewed him and offered him a role as his partner.  First, however, John criticized him for stooping to the level of intentionally killing someone and withholding an opportunity for escape--and therefore an opportunity for rebirth.  This scene is thematically one of the absolute best in the entire series.

Of course, as Saw IV showed, Hoffman does decide to help John.  A series of flashbacks depicts Hoffman aiding Jigsaw in kidnapping victims and preparing some of the games shown in Saw and Saw II.  As the story progresses, Hoffman frames Strahm as the true accomplice, a ruse not actually uncovered until Saw VI.  Before the final scene, even Strahm's superior begins to doubt his true identity.

Now, back to the "fatal five".  The only remaining members of the group learn that all of them were supposed to survive and that the traps could have been easily handled by all of them at once, but the final trap seems almost impossible considering how far their numbers have dwindled down.

Strahm confronts Hoffman after partially listening to a tape in front of an elevated and open glass coffin, with the brief brawl that resulted ending in Strahm pushing his opponent into a glass box the tape told him to enter.  However, Strahm watches as the box closes and retracts into the ground as the walls close in, crushing Strahm while Hoffman lives to continue the games without any pursuing police agents and without John to restrain his psychopathic tendencies.


Intellectual Content

Obviously, much of the intellectual content centers around the moral theories and actions presented in the movie.

For instance, Hoffman intended for the group of five to ignore their "instincts" and cooperate.  Many people try to base their morality upon utilitarian social activities that help the most individuals, sometimes to the exclusion of a minority and sometimes not.  Jigsaw and Hoffman clearly do not agree with that philosophy in all of its ramifications.  This is interesting, because Jigsaw has justified assault, kidnapping, mutilation, and murder for the sake of a goal, yet he discouraged the five from dropping to a moral low point in choosing not to work together.

Even though Hoffman eventually helps John Kramer, at first they have a great amount of ideological hostility towards the worldview of the other.  One particularly potent conversation shows them converse about these differences in person, and I've selected an excerpt to put below.  It highlights the different approach each takes in dealing with people like Seth Baxter.


Hoffman:  "He didn't deserve a chance.  He was an animal."

Jigsaw:  "EVERYBODY deserves a chance!"

Hoffman:  "You didn't see the blood.  You didn't see what he f-cking did to her."

Jigsaw:  "Killing is distasteful . . . to me.  There is a better, more efficient way."


Jigsaw directly implies during this conversation that a significant part of the games is dispensing justice.  Someone in a trap will either succeed or fail.  There are no additional outcomes.  In John's perception, someone who survives will have done whatever necessary to evade death and will walk away purged of evil vices and possessing a renewed appreciation for life.  If he or she dies, then justice was imposed and the world will no longer be negatively affected by the person in question.

"If a subject survives my method, he or she is instantly rehabilitated," John explains.  He and Hoffman have a severe ideological rift--John seeks the transformation and cleansing of evil people while Hoffman wants to destroy them without extending the chance for redemption that Jigsaw does.  During the conversation Hoffman is restrained in a chair with his hands tied by a rope that is around the trigger of a double-barreled shotgun aimed at his head.  Eventually John cuts the cord restraining Hoffman after pulling the trigger to reveal the click of an empty gun, signifying that the threat was a bluff.  John Kramer is a merciful god, at least according to his own standards.  He may condone strapping people into torture devices that will kill them if they fail their respective tests, but he loathes the practice of putting people in in inescapable traps.  He truly does believe that killing, at least other than that resulting from his games, is a universal moral evil, regardless of the victim.

After kidnapping (in a flashback) the man in the barbed wire maze from the original Saw, Hoffman says he felt unexpected remorse in completing the act.  "The heart cannot be involved.  Emotionally, there can be nothing there.  It can never be personal," John immediately cautions.  Of course, Jigsaw has nothing legitimate to orient his moral feelings around--he seems to deny that his morality is grounded in the impulses of the heart because he repeatedly emphasizes how the heart must be separated from these activities, yet he claims that killing is "distasteful" to him, unable to appeal to anything higher than the subjective feelings he attempts to compartmentalize away from his games.  He ends up in a dilemma, despising murder while engaging in it, denying that emotion has moral authority while having nothing but emotion to base his morality on.

In another scene, Jigsaw tells Hoffman, when he says John is assuming that a game will unfold as he wants, that he assumes nothing.  "If you're good at anticipating the human mind . . . it leaves nothing to chance."  Of course, the line "I assume nothing" resembles something that a true rationalist would say.  Jigsaw is portrayed as hyper-intelligent, almost omniscient in his ability to predict all possible outcomes.  Not only does he resemble a deity in how he metes out moral and judicial judgments with finality and authority, he wields an almost god-like mind that allows him to understand human psychology and the possible reactions of individuals in his games with an astonishing depth.

Lastly, Saw V, like the first Saw, ends with the villain walking away to plot more games.  People need to remember that it is absolutely a delusion to think that evil always is defeated.  I've had a Christian tell me that movies like Revenge of the Sith err because it is morally wrong for a movie to not allow the protagonists to succeed--because filmmakers shouldn't ever portray evil as winning.  However, as a Christian and as a rationalist, I have to admit that evil people do triumph.  The Bible, history, and everyday contemporary life teem with examples of this.  I am grateful that stories both fictional and real, Saw V included, remind us of this.


Conclusion

Saw V served as the needed bridge between the revelatory Saw IV and the splendid Saw VI, with its clever story, great depiction of the aftermath of Hoffman replacing John Kramer as Jigsaw, brilliant appearances of the now-deceased John, and a script that still continues to reveal dimensions of John's personality.  As with earlier installments, Saw V addresses some weighty themes in a manner that is not forced or cliche.  And, as always, watching Tobin Bell act as Jigsaw is a pure delight.  People who dislike the series or the concepts or story so integral to it will probably not enjoy the fifth film, but it fulfilled exactly the role it needed to in regards to the Saw mythos canon.


Content
1. Violence:  There are a few moments of very graphic depictions of gore.  The camera occasionally shows the dismembered corpses of a person blown apart by nail bombs and it does not shy away as survivors of the games lift arms that have been split in two at least until halfway between the wrist and the elbow.  Additionally, a decapitation and several bloodless brawls and assaults are depicted.
2. Profanity:  Many f-words and other uses of profanity are heard from a variety of characters.