Pshaw

Noel Vera

Australian filmmaker James Wan's "Saw" is a mighty blunt instrument,
about a serial killer out to make a philosophical point (yes, yet
another one of those). This time the killer kidnaps his victims and
introduces them to situations where they either do some horrible act
or allow themselves to get killed, learning in the process the error
of their ways (if said victim dies, that's part of the process).

It begins with two men chained to pipes in a filthy bathroom--Dr.
Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), and Adam (Leigh Whannell, who also
wrote the story and screenplay). Between them is the corpse of a
poisoned man who shot himself to death; surrounding them (like an
Easter egg hunt parody, or a particularly knotty RPG (role-playing
game), or a preview of the next generation in reality-TV shows) are
various props and implements needed for either of them to make their
escape, or kill each other, or otherwise fulfill the killer's needs.
The film gets its title from the hacksaws provided--not tough enough
to cut through their chains, but tough enough to cut through their
own legs (haven't we heard this one before--as far back as George
Miller's "Mad Max," perhaps?).

Maybe the movie's most ingenious gimmick is that the killer isn't
one per se; he never wields the fatal instrument but creates
conditions in which the victim has no choice but to use said
instrument--on himself, or others (the one responsible, if caught,
is probably most vulnerable to "conspiracy to aid suicide" or some
such charge). The device is as old as "Othello," where malignant
Iago persuades others to do his bidding; there have been stories
that have taken their cue from Shakespeare, "Saw" presumably being
the latest, but a movie--particularly one in a genre as tired as the
serial-killer flick--needs far more than mere gimmickry to retain
your attention, much less affection.

Wan and Whannell (sounds like a law firm) commit a plethora of sins
on their way to overturning (or trying to, anyway) the hoary clichés
of serial-killer flicks, but their most egregious are the
flashbacks. Two chained men and a corpse--if the movie confined
itself to this, and worked its plot around the given constraints the
way Alfred Hitchcock did in a number of his films
("Lifeboat," "Rope" and "Rear Window" come to mind), maybe we would
have something (plus maybe some truly disgusting toilet humor). But
there isn't even an attempt at rigor; whenever it pleases the
filmmakers the movie backtracks to show us what has already happened-
-ostensibly to clarify a story point, but with the unintended effect
that the bathroom's claustrophobic atmosphere is weakened, and
whatever tension built up between the two men frittered away by yet
another digression.

To make things worse they stitch on the useless appendage of a
subplot where Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover) obsessively hunts
the killer, seeking revenge for the death of his partner. Glover is
a fine actor (some of his best performances can be found in the TV
mini-series "Lonesome Dove," and in the Charles Burnett
masterpiece "To Sleep with Anger"), but this isn't exactly a high-
water mark for his career: he mutters and sweats and swears, as if
desperate to keep our attention, while his story adds additional
threads of implausibility in the already unwieldy plot.

Then there's Elwes as Dr. Gordon, yet another fine character actor
who's not above satirizing his impossible prettiness ("The Princess
Bride," "Robin Hood: Men in Tights"); here he's unrecognizably grimy
and persuasively low-key for the most part, but that self-
deprecating sense of humor you see in his comic roles is missing
(and sorely missed), and when he thinks his family is being
threatened he's forced to resort to some truly horrifying scenery
chewing.

"Saw" has its precedents--the elaborately (and implausibly) arranged
tableaus of "Se7en" come to mind, as well as the intricate (and
hardly persuasive) plot twists of "The Usual Suspects" (if the
filmmakers don't do the obvious and hire Kevin Spacey--star of both
pictures--to do their movie, it's presumably because his price range
has since Academy-Awarded its way out of budget's reach), but
perhaps the most instructive comparison can be made to Kurosawa
Kyoshi's masterpiece "The Cure." Like "Saw," Kyoshi's film presents
a killer with a mission; like "Saw" Kyoshi's killer uses indirect
persuasion--but there the resemblances end. The villain of "Saw" has
a rather simple-minded point to make--he wants his "ungrateful"
victims to "value life" (a parody of the kind of life lessons
promoted by self-help gurus on their way to their first million
dollars); the villain of "The Cure" doesn't even bother to try
reduce his philosophy to quick sound bites--you hear tantalizing
hints and glimpse vague outlines, but the precise features are
frustratingly out of reach. It's like looking into murky waters and
sensing something vast and monstrous gliding slowly beneath you.
Kyoshi reinforces the killer's freakish sense of reality with his
unsettling silences, his shadowy lighting, his fondness for showing
terrifying things happening either at the edge of one's field of
vision or right in front of you--straight on, no music, no
unnecessary fuss, as direct as a straight razor across an eyeball.
Ultimately it's Kyoshi's calmness that's so disturbing, the sense
that he accepts, maybe in some way even approves, of the evil he
depicts onscreen; you're not sure which is more horrifying--the
malevolence, or Kyoshi's inscrutable attitude towards that
malevolence.

In the meantime, we're stuck with this lame excuse for a horror
picture, and its lame attempts to be groundbreaking, to be
different. "Saw" ultimately earns its title, but possibly not in the
way the filmmakers intended: like any serrated blade that has been
dulled with inexpert use it grates, painfully and irritatingly and
not a little insultingly, across one's nerves.

(First published in Businessworld, 11/26/04)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)