Movie Review--Saw III

"I don't condone murder, and I despise murderers."
--Jigsaw, Saw III


Before October 27th and the release of Jigsaw, I hope to finish reviewing the Saw series, starting with this review of Saw III, which I had skipped over last year due to not having access to watching it for the first time.  Now that I've seen it, I think it ranks as one of the best in the series.  This movie presents a horror villain very unique among the pack.  Focusing on dying serial killer Jigsaw (John Kramer) and his unstable apprentice Amanda, it (ironically) explores Jigsaw's ironic dislike for revenge and murder.


Production Values

Saw III has a noticeably clearer aesthetic than its predecessors, a testament to its larger budget than the movies before it.  It benefits from a fitting script and the commitment of its star actor.  Tobin Bell is the perfect Jigsaw as usual.  Really, I will find it strange if there's no impactful cameo of him in the upcoming movie bearing the name of his media alias!  Confined to a bed for the entirety of the movie besides flashbacks, dying of cancer, and saddened by the misbehavior of his apprentice, Bell's John Kramer is still memorable despite the limitations on the character due to his condition and setting.  Many of the best scenes in the later sequels were the scene that show flashbacks of Tobin Bell's character although he dies in this installment.  And unlike in some horror series, when the villain dies, the villain dies.

Shawnee Smith offers a good effort as the conflicted Amanda Young who struggles between wanting to please and preserve the life of her mentor and wanting to revert back to her old lifestyle before she was "saved".  Angus Macfadyen plays his character Jeff very well, capturing the spirit of a depressed, vengeful, emotionally-crippled father.

Not too many horror movie sequels focus on a careful story, but this movie's creators carefully branched off of the first two films before boldly taking the story into territory that might be drastically different in another popular horror franchise.  Saw is, after all, a series based on story and characters, despite the misunderstandings of some who haven't watched it.  Charlie Clouser also contributed a fitting score with some great pieces that evolve out of earlier tracks from the series, including multiple remixes of the classic Zepp track--and he's returning for Jigsaw according to what I've read online.  I'm very excited!


Story

(Some spoilers below)

Detective Eric Matthews struggles to escape the bathroom Amanda, the revealed accomplice to the Jigsaw Killer, locked him in at the end of Saw II, freeing himself from a shackle by breaking his foot.  Detective Allison Kerry tries to find him, joining a group of detectives and police officers in a school where remains of a Jigsaw trap are discovered.  But Kerry notes that the doors are welded shut and had to be cut open to access the room where the trap occurred.  This contradicts Jigsaw's strict modus operandi, which, in the past, has always offered an avenue of escape and survival.

Kerry herself is abducted by Pigface and placed in a trap of her own, which does not release her even when she obtains and uses the key.  In the aftermath of her death, Amanda kidnaps a doctor named Lynn Denlon and pressures her into operating on a bedridden Jigsaw to keep him alive and in as little pain as possible during a series of tests for a man named Jeff.  Lynn wears a shotgun collar that will destroy her skull if Jigsaw's heart rate flatlines or if she travels a certain distance away.

Jeff begins his games in a suspended crate, tasked by Jigsaw with overcoming his obsessive desire for vengeance after a drunk driver killed his son Dylan.  As he plays the game he encounters an unhelpful witness to the tragedy, the judge who lightly sentenced the drunk driver, and the driver himself.  The witness, Danica Scott, hangs naked in a room of freezing temperature as water is squirted onto her until she freezes to death; Judge Halden is locked in place at the bottom of a vat filling up with liquid pig carcasses and is freed; Timothy Young, the driver (no relation to Amanda Young), is strapped into a mechanical device that twists his limbs and head.  Jeff slowly becomes more willing to actually help these individuals as he progresses with some encouragement from Jigsaw and the victims themselves.

John eventually tells Amanda to release Lynn, and when Amanda refuses, Jigsaw reveals to her that he was testing her too, as she had shown great error in creating the inescapable traps from the beginning.  Amanda complains about how nobody actually changes, despite her seeming rebirth after her own test, and shoots Lynn contrary to the protests of Jigsaw.  Jeff enters the room, shoots her, and is offered a chance to forgive Jigsaw.  Lynn is actually his wife, and he panics upon discovering her here.  He says he forgives Jigsaw before killing him, unwittingly dooming Lynn to death via the shotgun collar.


Intellectual Content

As expected, the moral ideologies presented and practiced by John Kramer and his follower(s) (viewers see from Saw IV onward that the network of Jigsaw apprentices was far more vast than it initially appeared) are prominent.

In Saw II, John tells Detective Matthews that he is not truly a murderer because he allows people to choose to live or die, echoing Doctor Gordon's comment in the first Saw that  "Technically speaking he's not really a murderer.  He never killed anyone."  Interestingly, John says here that he does not condone murder and despises those who murder, and these are exactly the things he criticizes Hoffman for in a Saw V flashback.  Of course, he and his accomplices still kidnap people and insert them into very dangerous situations.  Amanda eventually tells John before her death that "What you do is no different than murder.  You torture people.  You watch them die."  Still, the quasi-religious themes of John's philosophy are particularly on display as he uses somewhat religious language about the salvation of his victims, quotes the Golden Rule and Matthew 7:12 in a tape, and respects the autonomy of individuals to make their own choice to pursue what he views as redemption or damnation.

Despite the traps, Saw III actually presents a message about how vengeance can bring those who surrender to it to the point where they fail to see the humanity of others.  When Jeff initially seems to want to allow Danica Scott to freeze in her trap, she reminds that "I'm human.  I'm human just like your son was."  John insists to Jeff through a tape that even Timothy Young is a human being--and a Saw VI flashback even shows John subtly challenge Hoffman for callously treating Timothy's unconscious body before putting him in his trap.  To commit atrocities, people must often dehumanize their victims.  The process provides an excuse for not treating someone as one would treat others.  And intriguingly, although John values life--or at least thinks he does--it seems that few to none of his successors and accomplices actually share his values, as at least two of them made inescapable traps (Amanda and Hoffman) at various points.  He believes he is cleansing and changing people, yet they mostly appear to become even less eager for the redemption of others than he is.

And the transformation of his subjects is indeed Jigsaw's objective.  But although John thinks surviving one of his games will bring automatic rehabilitation, Amanda, his example survivor so seemingly transformed by her test that she joins Jigsaw in his work, reverts back into old habits.  She had cut herself in acts of self-harm before meeting John but allegedly renounced that behavior, yet during one scene she walks away from Lynn and John, lowers her pants, and places a knife on her thigh next to multiple other previous cut marks.  Before dying she also complains to John: "I'll tell you she hasn't changed because nobody fucking changes.  Nobody is reborn.  It's all bullshit!  It's all a fucking lie!"  She demands for John to fix her, one of the only "evidences" of the utilitarian success of his projects undone.  Can people truly change?  Of course!  And people do not always need to face kidnapping and torture/execution devices to change!  All of the usual internal consistency of John's worldview does not change the fact that the very core of his "work" is based upon fallacious errors--that people need to face death to decide to truly live and that someone can indirectly murder another without really having committed murder.


Conclusion

It is impressive that a series built around John Kramer could last five movies after his death, yet we are almost upon the fifth sequel since Saw III, which ended with the death of a cinematic legend.  Of all the horror series I've heard of, Saw alone boasts a character-driven story that unfolds and deepens over the course of its current seven movies (although Saw: The Final Chapter was mostly a major letdown).  Saw III is still remembered as one of the best entries in the franchise.  And though it shows the death of horror icon John Kramer, it sets up the natural growth of the series so that it progresses to the point seen in the recent social media marketing for this year's Jigsaw--Jigsaw was just one man, but now many men and women seem to view him as a savior and moral beacon, having become smaller pieces of a larger jigsaw puzzle in his name.  I'm hoping Jigsaw becomes the greatest in the series thus far!


Content:
1. Violence:  There are some gory traps in this one!  A woman's ribs get torn out of her body, part of Jigsaw's skull is removed during a surgery, a man's head is twisted entirely backwards, a woman's skull explodes when hit by multiple shotgun shells offscreen (though the results are shown directly onscreen).
2. Profanity:  Many f-bombs and some "lesser" profanities, especially concentrated near the end.
3. Nudity:  The first of Jeff's tests involves a nude woman hanging in a freezing environment.  Her entire torso is visible but her pubic region is obscured somewhat.