Saw

The first Saw was a good movie. Looking back at it now, having seen all 7, this is the only film that I can call “good” without reservation. The story is strong, so the plot holes don’t bother me that much. The performances are excellent, so I don’t mind how contrived the situations are. Beyond that, there’s a real sense of story-telling. While I may not like all his films, James Wan knows how to direct a movie.

Saw actually seems like something of an oddity in the series it spawned. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is in only a few scenes, with the identity of the Jigsaw killer being a mystery for most of the film. In later films Bell become so crucial to the success of the franchise they used extensive flashbacks in a desperate move to keep him in the series after Jigsaw's death. Here, however, the most prominent characters are Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover), mainly because the producers were able to get Cary Elwes and Danny Glover in a film that was supposed to go straight-to-DVD before the test audiences went nuts for it.

I’m also not the first nor the last person to note that this is the only film in the series in which Jigsaw personally uses a weapon with lethal intent against another human being. It seems downright bizarre, and it’s one of the few things that later films don’t even try to explain. I’ll freely admit it bothers the hell out of me, as it is something I can’t imagine the later Jigsaw doing. The plot makes far more sense if we just imagine that the cloaked man in that scene was Detective Hoffman from the later films disguising his voice.

The movie opens with Dr. Gordon waking up in a long-abandoned bathroom with a man named Adam (Leigh Whannell). Both are chained to the wall, with tapes, a tape recorder, and hacksaws that can’t cut through their chains, but could cut through their feet. Gordon is told that he has a limited period of time to kill Adam or his wife and daughter will both be killed. What appears to be a dead man is in the middle of the room, in a puddle of blood, holding a gun. While trying to find a way out, the two talk and we get a series of flashbacks gradually revealing the story. They’re being held by the Jigsaw Killer, a mysterious figure who places victims in elaborate traps with only the barest chance of escape, creating situations in which they kill themselves.

Doctor Gordon was a suspect in the case because his penlight was found at the scene of one of the traps, and the increasingly unstable, now discharged, Detective Tapp still believes he’s Jigsaw. Tapp’s storyline is shown to us in flashback parallel to Gordon's, as Tapp's partner (Ken Leung) is killed by a trap, and Tapp becomes obsessed with Gordon. We eventually discover that the detective is the connection between the two men, having hired Adam to follow and photograph Gordon.

We’re also treated to a few brief glimpses of Jigsaw’s traps, and some short scenes with Gordon’s wife and daughter (Monica Potter and Makenzie Vega) being held hostage by Zep (Michael Emerson), and employee at Gordon's hospital, and the decoy villain. These work well, the performances are all pretty good. They somehow manage to achieve more than the long asides used in later films in a fraction of the time.

I can see why this story continued for seven more sequels. There’s an energy here, and real passion you rarely see with low-budget horror films. No one involved phoned in a performance, and Elwes and Glover are in top-form, even if the former’s American accent does occasionally slip. The story, as silly as it may be at points, is never hard to follow, and every scene is shot with visual style and atmosphere. Say what you will about the sequels, but the original Saw is a certified classic.