Saw: Reviewed

Come tomorrow I'll know if I really need to drive down to Malacca for work, so I'm on perpetual standby. It must be said that having waxed the car, I am altogether reluctant to leave for anywhere I don't have to.

In the meantime, it's time for a long-delayed movie review! Tonight, it's Saw.

You're right. Not many people have heard of this, and for some bloody good reasons.

Reason No. 1: It probably takes the cake as one of the most effective thrillers this year.
Reason No. 2: It's bloody good.
Reason No. 3: Takeshi Miike's definitely got some potential competition in the west now, if only they don't sell out.

Saw opens very simply: two men (Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes) wake up in a dingy, dilapidated toilet, their feet chained to opposite ends of the room. They have almost no memory of how they got there, only that they feel like they've been drugged somehow. There's a dead body in a pool of blood in the middle of the room, and soon they find a package with two saws. There is a game in which they are the main players, and it won't end until one of them is dead. Add in a time limit, a slightly out of control cop played by Danny Glover and the fact that one of them HAS to die by 6 o'clock, and Saw turns into something I never quite expected but enjoyed a whole lot.

It's hard to review a movie like Saw without giving anything away. There's simply too much risk that something I write here will tip the balance of everything and end up with people not only knowing what the twist is (as improbable as that actually is) but also spoiling the fun for everyone. The short version of what I'm trying to say is this:

If you like thrillers of any kind, especially very visceral ones, then please give Saw a look.

It's tight, slick, unpretentious, gory, sick, darkly funny and serious all at the same time, and all without overwhelming use of jump-cuts and other tricks all these kids are fond of these days. The story is worth a second sitting simply because once you know the twist (and trust me it comes at the very end, seemingly out of left field) you'll want to see the little clues the filmakers scattered all through the roughly 100 minutes of the flick. The payoff may be a bit jarring to some (I know I haven't been so upset at an ending in a long while) but the whole experience, whilst not flawless, works. The editing is taut, and more than once I caught myself holding my breath, my fingers clenched. Now THAT is good suspense.

A word of caution, though. As with most of the movies I tend to favour, Saw is very generous with its depictions of brutality and violence. The plot contrivances in which these graphic maimings/killings occur stretch the limits of our disbelief, but simply because we need to believe that no one could possibly be that violent, or that sick. All in all Saw is a worthy addition to any thiller lover's collection, and I can't wait for the DVD release.

Highly recommended.

Ash.ox gives Saw a 4 out of 5.