Random Movie: Saw 3D (2010)

As I sat to watch Saw 3D, I was worried that having not seen the last installment, the series’ reliance on retcons and alternate looks at previous events would prove challenging to keep up with. While finishing part six after the fact helped fill in some of the backstory, it had little bearing on my opinion of the allegedly final Saw film which was very disconnected from the previous entries. Even a brand new viewer to the series would have little difficulty understanding the plot yet be baffled by the shoddy quality in this hugely subpar installment in the Jigsaw saga.

Even with the return of director Kevin Greutert and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, 3D feels more like a straight to DVD, half assed sequel than a legitmate follow up to a major theatrical series. Mostly gone is the intricate weaving of past events into a new narrative featuring Jigsaw’s traps to emphasize the preciousness of life. Of course, there is a B-side story of Bobby, a so-called survivor of one of Jigsaw’s previous games where he must choose between his family and friends who have made truckloads of money off of a fabicrated story. But unlike some of the better films, namely II and III, Bobby’s story has absolutely no bearing on the main events featuring Detective Hoffman and his cat and mouse game with Jigsaw’s ex Jill.

This actually feels more like a standard, cheap slasher film as the main motivation is Hoffman’s rage because Jill tried to kill him and has turned to a horrible caricature of a cop to expose his apprenticeship with Jigsaw. After the last, there really is not much more backstory, or even sidestory, to wring out as Jigsaw (clocking in with barely a few minutes of screentime), Amanda, and Hoffman’s experiences are mostly tapped out in the narrative sense. Thus, we have a movie that features traps like a Saw movie should but with characters that exist only to pad the running time until Hoffman can catch up to Jill to exact his revenge.

What should not be a shock if you follow movie news, Cary Elwes returns from oblivion as Dr. Gordon from the first but if you thought that his role would be more substantial than a quick cameo, you would be correct. While I do not wish to reveal his role, suffice to say you could probably figure it out even without seeing the movie. Even though the reveal technically makes sense, there was no indication or any clues sprinkled in previous films to back it up giving the impression that the writers just wanted to play to the fan favorites here. This also serves as one of the worst endings to a Saw film because it’s predictability seems to fly in the face of everything that has come before it in the series.

This fiasco with Gordon sums up my thoughts on the movie as everything here was not logical or necessary, but done likely because it was cool and something that fans were clamouring for. The opening trap was neat being that it was set outside in the midst of a big crowd of people but the fact that it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie is one thing, Jigsaw has gone from targeting murderers and drug dealers to a love triangle constructed by a deceitful woman who strings men along for affection. As you can see, one of these things is not like the other and I fully suspect this was designated as the last film because the next plot of torturing jaywalkers and customer service phone reps was not as compelling.

Of the cast, Costas Mandylor and Betsy Russell have had a few movies to get comfortable with their characters and turned in fairly decent performances and the faux-vivor Bobby was a sympathetic, if kind of otherwise flat, character played well by Sean Patrick Flannery. The rest of the cast, especially Chad Donella were pretty horrendous. Granted the first was saturated with Cary Elwes-brand overacting (he has barely improved, even with letting some of his natural accent slip through) so the bar was not set very high but it was painfully distracting to see Donella as a “seasoned” IAB detective with the mannerisms of a ten-year-old.

The biggest crime of Saw 3D is that everything was just a poor photocopy of the more decent moments of the series. In one of the villain’s final scenes of rage, he kills four people in a row in the least interesting way possible by a quick jab of a knife into their throats. The 3D was pretty good considering it seems randomly shoehorned into the series as a going-away present and to inflate ticket prices but it really did not serve much purpose. At the very least, it did not make the movie worse like bad 3D can but then again, the dumb random trap fodder characters did not really elevate things on their end either.