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'Saw III' has more disgust than fright

Movie Review: Saw III

By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic

Amanda (Shawnee Smith) and Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) in "Saw III."
Photo by Steve Wilkie
Amanda (Shawnee Smith) and Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) in "Saw III."

Saw III
PLAY OFFICIAL TRAILER
Starring:
Tobin Bell, Angus Macfadyen, Dina Meyer, Kim Roberts, Shawnee Smith
Crew:
Director, Darren Lynn Bousman; Writers, Leigh Whannell, James Wan
(Running time: 1 hr. 47 min.)
MPAA Rating: R
Critic's Rating: out of 4 stars.
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Saw III, another sequel to 2004’s Saw, once again follows the grisly exploits of Jigsaw. The extraordinarily manipulative serial killer abducts his victims and forces them to play elaborate games of his own design. Tobin Bell returns as Jigsaw, a perverse, mysterious figure who elects himself judge, jailer and torturer. He has someone else, however, play executioner.

Events in the frantic Saw III form a dingy smear of butchery that the seemingly close-to-death Jigsaw couldn’t possibly accomplish. Well, the bed-ridden puppet master has an assistant, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), a character who managed to survive one of the wicked games in Saw I. Though she’s a not particularly powerful woman and, of course, completely nuts, Amanda manages to kidnap several adult men and women and prepare a warehouse for the game’s unlucky players.

After Jigsaw and Amanda ghoulishly destroy a few preliminary victims, Saw III turns to principal players Lynn (Bahar Soomekh), a depressed emergency-room physician, and her estranged husband, Jeff (Angus Macfayden). The barely functioning Jeff is grieving over the auto-accident death of the couple’s young son. Lynn is losing it, too, even on the job in ER.

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II) and written by James Wan (writer-director of Saw I) and Leigh Whannell (Saw I and II), Saw III stirs much suspense. That suspense is built in the plot because death, of a most gruesome sort, is always a choice away for players in Jigsaw’s latest game.

Some of Jigsaw’s pawns, such as the career criminal chained in a room with a time bomb, are a long shot for survival. Others, such as the aforementioned Jeff, faces a series of tests and actually has a chance to live. But the puppet master doesn’t make it easy. Jeff must make agonizing choices. All the while, his doctor wife is forced to perform graphically depicted surgery that many moviegoers will not be able to watch.

Handheld cameras capture the dark and bloody deeds while a noisy soundtrack underlines Saw III’s gallery of grisly sights. Jeff’s awful journey through the warehouse produces anxiety and much disgust, but it’s not so frightful, at least in a conventional scary movie way. The choices Jeff makes, too, aren’t always convincing. Still, Saw III and its abundant torture and gore deliver the ugly product promised by this popular series.

 

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