Saw VI
Directed by Kevin Greutert
Written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan
Starring Tobin Bell, Betsy Russell, Costas Mandylor, Mark Hoffman, Shawnee Smith, William Easton, and Pamela Jenkins
Like a self-destructive 11th grader with ear-piercings and a Slipknot T-Shirt, Saw has always been, simultaneously, laughable and a little troubling for me. I like violence as much as any child reared on comic books and action movies, but “torture porn” thinly masking itself as a morality tale…they’ve got websites for that (and without the holistic mumbo jumbo). Apparently, writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan figured this out, because Saw IV opts to be much more topical then its’ predecessors allowing it to shake its’ label as “a poor man’s Se7en.” If just for a moment.
Lt. Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) has picked up the pieces of the Jigsaw killer. Initiated in one of the previous films (choose one), Hoffman has been instructed by the original/dead “Jigsaw” via videotape* to target William Easton. Easton is a heartless exec at a faceless insurance company, the type of organization that denies their policy holders by rummaging through every inconsistency in their medical history. Easton is too late to realize that one of the insured that he rejected is Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, who should win an award for skin-crawling).
Bleeding and disoriented, Easton has to hobble through an abandoned zoo to decide the fate of his colleagues, denying them elaborate deaths by steam pipes that boil the skin, merry-go-rounds triggered to a shot gun, or chemical baths that’ll soak you to the bone.
For once, the Saw series decided to tackle something relevant, creating a film that isn’t really commenting on our current political/moral head-butting, but, at the very least, invests you in its’ outcome because of it. The end result still adds up to more of the same, but it’s this additional undertone that makes the body counts almost noteworthy, and the end result (I’m going to go there), almost emotional.
*Just a thought…If the LAPD really wanted to catch the Jigsaw killer and his multiple copycats you’d think they would follow the trail of videotapes that Tobin Bell posthumously leaves for his apprentices. The guy must spend a fortune on video equipment. Start patrolling the local Best Buy and arrest his @$$!
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