‘Saw’ doesn’t cut it, even as a really bad film

Uncle Don

I see dead people. Well parts of ‘em anyway.

It took guts to make this flick. Yes that’s a tired shopworn pun,

but this week’s waste of an hour’s hard-earned pay (matinee, of

course; you think I can afford to drop full freight on this barker?)

is a tired shopworn movie.

Remember Danny Glover in the first “Lethal Weapon.” There he was

sitting on a booby-trapped toilet. What if Mel Gibson didn’t rescue

him? A little bing and a little bang and a little boom, Glover is out

on the lawn. All over the lawn, all around the house, all through the

neighborhood. Pushing up daisies all over the tract. Whatta mess.

Glover revisits this mess as Detective Tapp in the

quickly-disappearing-from- your-local-mega-plex, gross-o-thon film

“Saw.”

He’s really come way down in the cinematic food chain, reduced to

grunting a few words as he drives around, stands around and smirks

around. It’s a long slide from caviar to Power Bait.

“Saw” opens in a restroom that’s marginally cleaner than any you’d

find out on 99 or 395, presuming you ignore the dead body, the gun

and the pools of blood. You got yer clogged heads filled with

floaters, missing towels, cracked tiles, nonfunctioning sinks, leaky

pipes and the general ambience of some fast-food joint that never has

and never will make it past any health department -- in any Third

World country.

Chained on opposite walls, out of reach of each other are our

protagonists, the doctor (Cary Elwes) and the derelict (Leigh

Whannell, who also doubles his blame for this moronstrocity as

co-writer). Doc is cheating on his wife; derelict is taking pics of

said actions. One has to kill the other to become free. Why them?

Why not? There’s gotta be a movie, and the mindless sleep-inducing

reasons for picking them are unfortunately gone over in mind-numbing,

sleep-inducing detail.

“Saw” is little more than a poor man’s or indigent man’s “Seven.”

“Seven” as you may recall, showed people being punished for seven

deadly sins, among them greed, sloth, lust and liberalism. The eighth

deadly sin should be, must be, and has to be: overacting.

It stars a plethora of tomatoes I didn’t recognize in addition to

the offender-in-chief, Danny Glover. If any of them rubbed more than

two nickels together to pay for acting school, they were stiffed.

William Shatner is positively Shakespearean by comparison.

There’s been all sorts of homicidal bad guys over the years in the

movie business. Got a new one here. But listen up. I’m gonna give

away the ending of the movie. For those of you standing in a line of

none to view this “achievement,” you’d better quit reading. However,

I expect the only ones reading this waste of column inches are those

forced to -- my editors. And they should know better, but probably

don’t because, well, they’re ... editors. None too bright, but then

you probably assumed that.

The bad guy, after you’ve choked down red herring after red

herring, isn’t the doc, the derelict or the rudimentarily coherent

hospital orderly with Marty Feldman eyes and palsied hands and

deranged appearance. It’s Jigsaw, some old fat balding white guy with

terminal brain cancer. I guess the cancer, like some of the voices in

my head, are telling him to go do things.

His talent is to place people in situations where, kinda like

voting Democratic, they must make ugly, untenable choices.

One butterball must run through a maze of razor wire. Another has

to walk barefoot through glass covered in flammable goo, while

carrying a candle. My favorite? The stoner broad with the headpiece

that will lock her mouth permanently open, exploding her head if she

doesn’t eviscerate some poor yahoo and pull the key out of his

stomach. They all have only so much time to accomplish their task.

Yes folks, it’s a “Fear Factor” for the demented and depraved and

decrepit. Hmmm, maybe the same audience.

Movie co-writer Whannell said in an interview that he hoped the

people walked “out thinking about the entire movie.” Well, I thought

about it. All of it. Thought about what could have been if only the

director had used nitrate film. And smoked a lot.

* UNCLE DON reviews B-rated movies and cheesy musical acts for the

Daily Pilot. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].