Movie Review: SAW

*Awesome film, one of the best of 2004* This is how I feel about the latest movie from "Lion's Gate Films" gone to DVD last Tuesday. I was lucky enough to hit Blockbuster on my lunch hour to snag my copy on my movie pass. My wife wouldn't even watch this movie with me after watching the trailor. I ended up watching it on my notebook with my iPod earphones. I watched this movie the ONLY way it should be watched, in the complete dark. Enough about events that led up to this masterpeice.. on with the review

The story takes off in an old bathroom-style basement room (with no stahls) with rusty tile and blood-stained floor. Two men that have never met(A Doctor, and a Photographer) are trapped there and unsure how they got there. In the middle of the room lays a man (appears to have committed suicide) lying face down in buckets of blood that drained from the gunshot from his head. In this dead man's hands hold a revolver and a mini-tape recorder. The men that are trapped in this room are chained to heat pipes on opposite ends of the bathroom. Each man is given a mini tape to play in the recorder that gives them clues to the game he has created for them to play to stay alive.

The movie is filled with riddles that the men have to keep guessing right in order to stay alive. The story is best summed up, that a serial killer snatches people from their everyday lives that are not greatful about being alive. (Suicide attempts, drug abusers, cheaters) He then puts them in situations that have them trying to stay alive no matter what you have to do, the only problem is there is about 1,000 ways to die and only 1 way to live in these scenerios he puts them in. The plot thickens when you learn that the two men trapped in the bathroom, have more than they know in common. One man was hired to follow the other man around and take pictures of him cheating on his wife, with another woman. The story continues on through riddle after riddle, and gut wrenching gory scene after gory scene. The killer is extremely clever in his nature on some of the ideas he thinks up. The doctor in the bathroom eventually looses his mind and proceeds to hacksaw his foot off in an effort to free himself from his deadly fate of the killer returning to the bathroom and killing him or his family back home.

The movie has an awesome twist ending where you think the killer is actually one of the workers form the hospital that the doctor works at, and you find out at the end that he is not the killer at all, he was also a pawn in a game stretched by the killers imagination. After this man breaks into the bathroom to kill the doctor, the photographer jumps him from behind, killing him with the back ceramic tank cover off the toilet. After the photographer kills him, he frantically searches the dead corpse for a possible key that would free his leg. As he checks the dead man's jacket pockets, he comes across another tape recorder! He pushes play and you quickly learn that this isn't the killer at all, this was another victim doing what he had been instructed to do, so he could live. You see the dead man in the middle of the floor (lying there since beginning of movie) start to move.. He gets up to his knees, and stands up and removes a "rubber-like" fake head injury mask form his face.. This man is the killer, and was a CANCER PATIENT OF THE DOCTOR'S from the hospital!! He had cancer killing him, and was taking out his rage on people that weren't sick, but that were unhappy or destroying their own lives.

What I find interesting about this movie the most, is why they call the movie "SAW" it's because the serial killer always "watched" his victims kill themselves in the situations he put them into, when they tried to escape and killing others to stay alive in our own selfish manner of human instinct to survive.

I rate this film 5.0/5.0 (Perfect)