Saw (film)
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- This article is about the 2004 horror film, Saw. For series information, see the article: Saw (film series).
| Saw | |
|---|---|
 Saw film poster |
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| Directed by | James Wan |
| Produced by | Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules Mark Burg |
| Written by | James Wan Leigh Whannell |
| Starring | Cary Elwes Leigh Whannell Danny Glover Monica Potter Michael Emerson Tobin Bell |
| Music by | Charlie Clouser Fear Factory Pitbull Daycare Front Line Assembly |
| Cinematography | David A. Armstrong |
| Editing by | Kevin Greutert |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | October 29, 2004 |
| Running time | 102 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,200,000 (est.) |
| Followed by | Saw II |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Saw is the first installment of the Saw horror film series. Directed by James Wan and written by Wan and Leigh Whannell, Saw was filmed during only eighteen days of production. It was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2004 and saw international release later that year on October 29. Saw is essentially an expansion of Wan and Whannel's 2003 short film of the same name.
The film's story revolves around two men who are kidnapped, locked in an industrial bathroom, and given instructions related to escaping. Meanwhile, police detectives investigate and attempt to apprehend the criminal responsible, the "Jigsaw Killer."
Originally rated NC-17 for strong, graphic violence, the film was slightly edited to achieve an R rating. The unrated version is available as the Saw: Uncut Edition, a DVD special edition that was released around the same time that Saw II was released theatrically.
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[edit] Plot
Saw opens in an industrial washroom, where photographer Adam Faulkner (Leigh Whannell) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) are chained by their ankles to pipes at opposite corners. Between them is a corpse (Tobin Bell) holding a revolver and a microcassette. Lawrence and Adam discover tapes in turn saying 'play me'. From the microcassette, Adam is told he must only escape the bathroom, while Lawrence is told that he must kill Adam before six o'clock, or he, his wife, and his daughter will be killed in turn. Hacksaws are soon discovered; neither is sufficiently sharp to cut through their chains, and Adam throws his away in agitated frustration. Lawrence realizes that the saws are meant instead for their feet.
Lawrence determines that their captor is the Jigsaw Killer, named due to his practice of cutting pieces of skin in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle piece from his victims, though Lawrence comments that the name is a misnomer, as he never directly murders anyone and his intentions are for his victims to survive with a better appreciation of life. A series of flashbacks of his previous victims is presented, including his only known survivor, a highly traumatized heroin addict named Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), who believes that her experience in the test has made her a better person in the end.
As Adam and Lawrence search for alternative escape routes, Zep Hindle (Michael Emerson) breaks into the Gordon house and captures Lawrence's wife, Alison (Monica Potter), and daughter, Diana (Makenzie Vega)in order to save himself from a deadly poison. Through flashback, we learn that Zep is an orderly at Lawrence's hospital who witnessed Lawrence coldly informing an elderly patient, John Kramer, that he had terminal brain cancer. (We also recognize John as the corpse in the bathroom.) While psychologically toying with Alison and Diana, Zep monitors Adam and Lawrence through video surveillance.
Simultaneously, the house is being observed by Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover). Tapp grew unhealthily obsessed with the Jigsaw case after hearing Amanda's testimony, and, following a lead, he and his partner, Steven Sing (Ken Leung), illegally broke into a warehouse that turned out to be one of Jigsaw's lairs, where they saved a man from being killed by drills. Before they could secure Jigsaw's arrest, however, Sing was gunned down by a booby trap, and Jigsaw escaped. Tapp was later disbarred from the police force, and is now stalking Lawrence, convinced from planted evidence that he is the Jigsaw Killer.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom, the two men stage Adam's murder for the cameras that are watching them, but a strong electric shock is sent through his chains, foiling the ruse. Lawrence later finds a cell phone that can only receive calls. Following these events, Adam and Lawrence recall their abductions; they were both ambushed and knocked unconscious by a stranger wearing a pig mask. The phone then receives a call from Alison, who warns Lawrence that Adam knows more than he is telling. Adam explains that he had been paid by Tapp to trail and photograph Lawrence and shows him a pile of photographs that he found with the hacksaws. Lawrence begins to berate Adam, but grows defensive when Adam shows Lawrence evidence that he has been cheating on his wife. The two begin arguing, but are distracted when Lawrence notices a picture of Zep in his house. They deduce that Zep is their abductor. Just as this realization is made, however, Adam points out that it is six o'clock, the deadline.
Allison frees herself from Zep, and a struggle ensues. Gunshots are fired, which attract the attention of Tapp, who distracts Zep long enough for Alison and her daughter to flee. Zep shoots Tapp fatally and races to the sewers, intent on killing Lawrence, who is only aware of the sounds of gunfire and screaming. Flung into desperation, he uses his hacksaw to cut off his foot and shoots Adam with John's revolver. Zep arrives to find Lawrence in tears. Before Zep can kill him, however, Adam springs from the floor, as his wound was in fact nonfatal, and beats Zep to death with a toilet tank cover as Lawrence slowly crawls away, promising to get help and return for Adam.
When Lawrence does not respond to Adam's pleas to return, Adam searches Zep's body for a key, but finds another microcassette player. As the series theme, "Hello Zepp", begins to play, Adam learns that Zep was only a pawn in Jigsaw's game who acted under threat of death. He then hears a moan behind him and turns to see John slowly rising to his feet. John tells Adam that the key to the chains had been in the bathtub in which Adam had awakened when the movie began. The key went down the drain along with the bathwater when Adam, in his frantic thrashing, unplugged the stopper. Adam reaches for Zep's handgun, but John stuns him with another remote-controlled electrical current. John flicks off the lights and muses, "Game over!" before slamming the door, sealing Adam in the bathroom as he screams in despair over the credits.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Cary Elwes | Doctor Lawrence Gordon |
| Leigh Whannell | Adam Faulkner |
| Danny Glover | Detective David Tapp |
| Monica Potter | Alison Gordon |
| Michael Emerson | Zep Hindle |
| Ken Leung | Detective Steven Sing |
| Makenzie Vega | Diana Gordon |
| Tobin Bell | John Kramer / Jigsaw Killer |
| Shawnee Smith | Amanda Young |
| Dina Meyer | Detective Allison Kerry |
| Alexandra Bokyun Chun | Carla |
| Benito Martinez | Brett |
| Mike Butters | Paul Stallberg |
| Paul Gutrecht | Mark Rodriguez |
| Ned Bellamy | Jeff |
| Oren Koules | Unnamed man |
| Avner Garbi | Father |
| Hans Raith | Detective |
| Rachael Conroy | Puppet |
[edit] Reception
Saw was a financial success. Shot on a meager budget of about US$1.2 million, it earned over $55 million at the box office in the U.S. alone and $102,917,772 worldwide.[1] Critical responses were mixed. It earned a 45% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 29% rating from the most esteemed professional critics, qualifying it as "rotten." Most reviewers were dissatisfied with the acting and dialogue and noted the problematic story structure and twist ending. Critics who enjoyed the film, however, cited the finale as a redemptive strong point. [2]
[edit] Impact
With the emergence of the torture porn genre in the 2000s, the Saw film series, along with similar films such as Hostel and The Devil's Rejects, is frequently singled out as an example of the prevalence of exploitive graphic violence and gore in horror films, though Saw has a significantly less amount of gore.[citation needed]
Saw occupies the third slot on Bravo's Even Scarier Movie Moments for the scene in Lawrence cuts off his own foot. [3] This scene, Amanda's test and the razor wire maze scene were grouped among the scariest film scenes of all time on FilmSite. [4]
[edit] Soundtrack
- Main Article: Saw (soundtrack)
Megadeth's song "Die Dead Enough" was originally set to be featured in the movie,[5] but was not used for undisclosed reasons.[6]
[edit] Unrated edition
The unrated edition of the film is approximately eight seconds longer than the theatrical version. The additional shots include a close-up of the body on the bathroom floor, additional forensic photographs of Jigsaw's victims, a short segment of Paul crawling through razor wire, Amanda sifting through a man's intestines looking for a key to her trap, and Lawrence sawing through his foot.
There is also an Easter egg on the uncut DVD titled "See Saw in 60," which consists of three jumpy and humorous one-minute condensed versions of the film. Two are presented using dolls with crude faces drawn on them; sound clips from the movie are used for one, high-pitched squeaky voices for the other. The third is made using actual footage from the movie and the squeaky voices. Similar Easter eggs were used on later uncut releases of the sequels.
[edit] See also
- Saw, the original 2003 short film
- Saw: Rebirth, the comic book prequel to Saw
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official SAW Website & Fan Club
- Official site
- Saw at the Internet Movie Database
- Saw at Rotten Tomatoes
- Official World of Saw at UGO
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