Saw III (2006)

  

Suffering?  You haven't seen anything yet.

 

 

Another day another Saw movie.  This time we have the third film in the series.  When last we were in the world of Jigsaw we had discovered Amanda was working with John Kramer (Tobin Bell), helping him set up the deadly "games" he wanted to play.  Amanda (Shawnee Smith) leaves Detective Eric Matthews (Donny Wahlberg) the dirty cop, in the same bathroom from the first Saw film.  As Kramer's brain tumor worsens, he gets Amanda to help him set up more games.  One of the games involves a man named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen from Braveheart and Titus) who has had his life destroyed after a drunk driver killed his son.  In order to come face to face with the drunk driver, and get his revenge, Jeff will have to complete tasks that Kramer and Amanda have set up for him.  That is not the only person who is at Kramer and Amanda's mercy.  In order to try and treat John's brain tumor an emergency room doctor, Lynn Denton (Bahar Soomekh from A Lousy 10 Grand and Just Like a Woman), is abducted and taken to a makeshift hospital room.

 

 

Denton is strapped into a collar rigged with multiple shotgun shells that will go off if a switch is tripped on the collar.  That trigger is attached to a heart monitor that John is hooked up to.  If John's heart stops the collar will trigger and all the shotgun shells will shoot Lynn in the head.  John wants to stay alive long enough to see Jeff complete his game.  This time the traps are even more cringe worthy and deadly.  This Saw installment definitely enters the world of torture porn.  Saw III is even more edge of your seat than the first two.  Everything has that grimy and dimly lit feel that we have become accustom to.  The editing is top notch in order to bring the most tension that it can.  Saw III accomplishes two different things here which seems almost impossible to do at the same time.  While it casts a wider net and brings more characters into the world of Saw, it also concentrates the spotlight into a near pinpoint making everyone even closer than before. 

 

 

Back for another time in the director's chair is Darren Lynn Bousman who also directed part two.  Leigh Whannell who played Adam from the first Saw (and is actually seen here again in some flashback scenes) along with James Wan (the director of the original and who offered some ideas for the story here) wrote the screenplay for the film.  The feeling of Saw III is different as some of the traps this time are set up so the people in them have no chance to make it out alive which goes against Kramer's usual methods.  Another difference is that the traps in the first two films were set to force people to have more appreciation for life but here the traps are made (especially the ones laid out for Jeff's) to challenge the ability to forgive.  There are some seriously gruesome scenes in this one.  But the story that ties everything together set my head spinning.  As the popularity of the films grew so did the budget.  Saw III saw an increase from four million (for Saw 2) to ten million.  The music, which I enjoyed from the first two films, was stepped up even more here with some sort of music or song being heard for nearly the entire duration of the film.  Better than the second film in the series but not nearly as good as the original.  I will give this three and a half bone saws out of five.