Saw III
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| Saw III | |
|---|---|
 Saw III film poster |
|
| Directed by | Darren Lynn Bousman |
| Produced by | Mark Burg Oren Koules Gregg Hoffman |
| Written by | James Wan Leigh Whannell |
| Starring | Tobin Bell Shawnee Smith Angus Macfadyen Bahar Soomekh Donnie Wahlberg Dina Meyer Leigh Whannell Costas Mandylor Lyriq Bent Barry Flatman Mpho Koaho Debra Lynne McCabe |
| Music by | Charlie Clouser |
| Cinematography | David A. Armstrong |
| Distributed by | Lionsgate Maple Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  October 27, 2006 October 27, 2006 |
| Running time | Theatrical Cut: 107 min. Unrated Cut: 113 min. Director's Cut: 121 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $12 million (approx.) |
| Preceded by | Saw II |
| Followed by | Saw IV |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Saw III is the third installment in the Saw series. The film is a joint effort of both Saw's writers/directors, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and Saw II's writer/director, Darren Lynn Bousman.
The film focuses on the resurfaced Jigsaw Killer, the antagonist of the previous films, who works with his unstable apprentice Amanda to finish his final tests before he dies. The film contains additional back-story about the two antagonists.
The film has been dedicated to Gregg Hoffman, producer of the first two movies. Hoffman died on December 4, 2005, shortly after the official Lions Gate Entertainment announcement of Saw III.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
This film begins immediately after the end of Saw II, with Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) escaping the bathroom he was left in by breaking his foot to slip out of his ankle chain. Later flashbacks depict his vicious fight with Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), who eventually overcomes him and leaves him for dead. Before she leaves, Matthews shouts several angry parting comments, calling Amanda a "junkie bitch" and telling her she is nothing compared to Jigsaw, causing her evident distress. What she does next is not revealed at this time. Other flashbacks show that Amanda had been working with John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell), prior to the events of the first film, and had been the one who actually instigated the abduction of Adam under Jigsaw's orders. After the events of the first film, it is revealed, she had suffocated Adam in a mercy killing.
The film's present is set six months after Matthews' capture; he has been missing this entire time. Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer), Lieutenant Rigg (Lyriq Bent) and Forensic Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) are investigating the corpse of Jigsaw's latest victim Troy (J. Larose), intrigued by the fact that his trap was inescapable (a break in Jigsaw's M.O.). When Kerry returns home, she is kidnapped and finds herself in a trap of her own. When the escape method given fails and Amanda arrives, Kerry realizes this trap is also inescapable and is killed.
Meanwhile, a dying Jigsaw orders the abduction of two more victims: a skilled but depressed doctor named Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) and Jeff Reinhart (Angus Macfadyen), a father obsessed with revenge against the driver that killed his son. A collar holding five loaded shotgun shell mounts, wirelessly connected to Jigsaw's heart monitor, is locked around Lynn’s throat by Amanda. The game is simple - keep John alive until Jeff completes his tests. If she tries to leave the area or fails, flatline indicator on the monitor will instantly arm and fire the collar device. Jeff is led through an abandoned meat packing plant where he is given the choice of rescuing three prime targets of revenge from a variety of temporal traps. His initial hesitancy in each case ultimately dooms each one; even though he does save the lenient Judge Halden (Barry Flatman), his attempt to save his son’s killer Timothy Young (Mpho Koaho) leads to the deaths of both Timothy and Halden. After Jeff completes his tests, he continues forward to finally meet the maker of his torment.
Lynn succeeds in keeping John alive, but during the course of an improvised brain surgery, he semi-consciously professes his love for a woman named Jill during a dream. Amanda believes his words are directed toward Lynn. After the operation, Lynn and John talk privately and it is revealed that Lynn's ordeal has given her a new appreciation of her life and family.
Now disillusioned with John's attempts to change his victims' perspective, Amanda admits to him that she set up the inescapable traps for Troy and Kerry. She refuses to release Lynn, despite John's pleading, and instead shoots her in the back. Lynn falls into Jeff's arms as he enters the room, whereupon he shoots and fatally wounds Amanda using a gun he has picked up in the warehouse. As Amanda bleeds to death, John tells her that she has failed the test he set up for her: "Your will is being tested--your will to keep someone alive." These words, spoken as if meant for Lynn, were instead directed toward Amanda, who had not known until this point that Jeff and Lynn were married.
John now offers Jeff the chance to forgive him or take revenge, since he is responsible for Jeff's torment throughout this game. If Jeff forgives, John will call an ambulance to save Lynn. As Jeff says, "I forgive you," he picks up a circular saw and slashes John's throat, causing Lynn's collar to detonate and kill her as the door to the room closes and locks. A micro-cassette recorder in John's hand delivers the message that he himself was the final test of forgiveness; by killing him, Jeff has failed. In addition, John is the only person who knows where Jeff's daughter Corbett is hidden, and Jeff will have to play another game in order to find her before her air supply runs out. He is left screaming in despair as a montage of all the traps in the film series to date flashes by. The movie ends with a shot of John's corpse lying on the bed and Lynn's head blown off.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Tobin Bell | John Kramer / Jigsaw |
| Shawnee Smith | Amanda Young |
| Angus Macfadyen | Jeff Reinhart |
| Bahar Soomekh | Lynn Denlon |
| Dina Meyer | Detective Allison Kerry |
| Mpho Koaho | Timothy Young |
| Barry Flatman | Judge Halden |
| Lyriq Bent | Lieutenant Rigg |
| J. Larose | Troy |
| Debra Lynne McCabe | Danica Scott |
| Costas Mandylor | Detective D. Hoffman |
| Betsy Russell | Jill Tuck |
| Stefan Georgiou | Dylan |
| Niamh Wilson | Corbett |
| Alan Van Sprang | Chris |
| Kim Roberts | Nurse Deborah |
| Leigh Whannell | Adam Faulkner (flashback) |
| Donnie Wahlberg | Detective Eric Matthews |
| Kelly Jones | SWAT Pete |
| Tim Burd | Obi (flashback) |
| Franky G | Xavier (dead) |
| Unknown actor | Dr. Lawrence Gordon (glimpse) |
| Oren Koules | Unnamed man (flashback) |
| Michael Emerson | Zep Hindle (dead) |
- The full cast list can be found at the Lionsgate website, under "Production Notes."
[edit] Production
According to the director's audio track on the DVD release, almost all the transitions from one place to another (such as from Kerry's trap to Chris' place, and Jigsaw's lair to Jeff's crate) were not made using digital effects. The transitions were shot on the spot. So when the camera moves from Troy's crime scene to Kerry being in the bathtub, Dina Meyer had to run, take off all her clothes, and jump into the tub. If you look closely, you can still see the water moving from when she got in.
According to Leigh Whannell, Adam had a lot more scenes in the original film. One of which was the scene between Adam and Amanda, included on the Saw III DVD bonus features.
According to producer Daniel J. Heffner, the film was toned down 7 times to obtain the "R" rating. According to director Darren Lynn Bousman, the MPAA ratings board was less concerned with the film's graphic violence because television shows like CSI have expanded the scope of what is acceptable viewing with their graphic depictions of crime scenes and autopsies. Bousman says the MPAA is more concerned with emotional torture that disturbs the audience.[1]
[edit] Promotion
| Ratings | |
|---|---|
| Argentina: | 18 |
| Australia: | MA15+ |
| Austria: | 16 |
| Brazil: | 18 |
| Canada (Alberta): | 18A |
| Canada (BC/SK): | 18A |
| Canada (Ontario): | 18A |
| Canada (Quebec): | 16+ |
| Chile: | 18 |
| Finland: | 18 |
| France: | 18 |
| Germany: | 18 |
| Hong Kong: | III |
| Hungary: | 18 |
| Ireland: | 18 |
| Japan: | R-15 |
| Mexico: | 18 |
| Netherlands: | 16 |
| Norway: | 18 |
| Portugal: | M/18 |
| Singapore: | R21 |
| South Korea: | 18 (cut) |
| Sweden: | 15 |
| Switzerland: | 20 |
A scene from Saw III was going to be shown when the action / thriller film Crank opened in theaters on September 1. However, the MPAA did not allow it, due to the scene's large amount of gore. For similar reasons, an early teaser trailer for the movie was removed from the official Saw III site. The next trailer released featured flashbacks of Jigsaw attaching the "reverse bear trap" to Amanda and applying his makeup for posing as the corpse in the bathroom from Saw. The ads played up Saw's yearly release dates with the tagline, "If it's Halloween, it must be Saw"
Around 1,000 special posters were made and sold for $20 each in support of Saw III. The posters were made with a small amount of Tobin Bell's blood (mixed with the printing ink). One such poster was also signed by the entire cast and crew of Saw III, and was auctioned off. All the proceeds from the auctioned poster were donated to the Red Cross.[2]
At Spike TV's Scream Awards on October 10, 2006, Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith appeared on stage with director Darren Lynn Bousman. Smith pinned Bousman to a chair, saying "Payback's a bitch," while Bell staged sawing off the top of Bousman's head. Smith then found a blood-saturated piece of film on his brain. This led to a "World Premiere" trailer featuring the plight of Troy in the body chains trap.
In a promotional video featured on MySpace (with similar versions made for YouTube and Break.com), Billy, Jigsaw's puppet, addresses the viewer in the same fashion as in the videos in the film. He states, "Hello. Are you watching me on MySpace? Good. I'd like to play a game with you. Up until now you've...just sat there as a voyeur, watching other people in their videos without care about who that person is. Well, what do voyeurs see when they look into the mirror? Let's find out. Right now you are being watched. If you forget for one second that you're being watched, you will lose. Your only way out is to understand these numbers: 1, 0, 2, 7, 0, 6. Find the meaning and you will live. Just remember; knowledge changes everything."[3] The numbers represent the release date of the film, October 27, 2006.
The original cut of the movie ran for over two hours, and several scenes have been confirmed to have been cut out, including a scene shown being filmed on... depicted an extended scene of Kerry and Rigg examining Troy's trap, where Kerry reveals to Rigg she has had nightmares about Eric, and she blames herself for what happened to him.
There was also reference in an interview with Bousman of a scene that was not shown Jigsaw questioning if he was correct in his goal: He begins to question because he's near the very end, maybe this wasn't right. Maybe none of this really worked. Maybe he is a murderer. Maybe he is a killer... For the first time, we actually see him break down and cry. Imagine your entire life's work. You're on your deathbed. You know there's nothing else you can do and here's how you'll be remembered: as a killer, as a murderer. Not as someone who helped people. Not as someone who changed lives. Someone who took away lives. The one thing he didn't want to be and, as he's on his deathbed, he's realizing this.[4] The audio commentary also notes that Leigh Whannell's character of Adam had more screen time, including a scene in which he passes by Amanda at the entrance of his apartment that was also included on the DVD.[5]
[edit] Reception
At screenings in the United Kingdom three people were reported to have fainted at separate movie theaters, resulting in ambulances needing to be called.[6]
Rotten Tomatoes.com gave the film a 27% rating, qualifying it as "Rotten."
[edit] Box office
Playing in 3,167 theaters Saw III grossed a total of $33,610,391 on its opening weekend.[7] With a production budget of $9.98 million,[7] the film was already considered a box office success. Saw III ended up grossing $80,238,724 domestically and $150,907,724 worldwide. As of May 2008, the film has made $164,874,275.[7]
[edit] Soundtrack
[edit] DVD releases
The DVD was released on January 23, 2007 in two versions, both of which have the same bonus features:
- R-rated (107 min.) Full Screen
- Unrated (113 min.) Anamorphic Widescreen, Full Screen
- Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 tracks
- Three Commentary Tracks:
- 1. Director Darren Lynn Bousman, Writer Leigh Whannell and Executive Producers Peter Block and Jason Constantine.
- 2. Producers Oren Koules and Mark Burg.
- 3. Director Darren Lynn Bousman, Editor Kevin Greutert and Director of Photography David A. Armstrong.
- Deleted scenes, including the fight scene between Amanda and Lynn, and the extra scene with Adam and Amanda.
- "The Traps of Saw III"
- "The Details of Death: The Props of Saw III"
- "Darren's Diary: Anatomy of a Director"
- Trailers
Also confirmed are two exclusive featurettes to the Blu-ray Disc release of Saw III, which includes a feature on the writing of Saw III, and an "Amanda: Evolution of a Killer" featurette. These featurettes were also included on an exclusive 2-disc edition, sold at Target stores in the U.S. and Future Shop stores in Canada. They contain the Unrated Widescreen Edition on Disc 1.
[edit] Unrated Edition
The Unrated DVD, released on January 23, 2007, features a 113-minute cut of the film that includes more gore. On the commentary track, Bousman notes that this is not his original, two-hour-plus cut of the film, and that is why he released the Director's cut in October 2007.
The Unrated version of Saw III differs from the theatrical in many ways. The first noticeable difference is that the opening scene is more violent. The shots of Eric's heel being broken are much closer, and more detail is shown. When Kerry is discussing Eric with Rigg, the scene is slightly extended, showing her commenting on how she can't sleep because of his disappearance. When Kerry's trap triggers, a frontal shot is shown of her ribs being torn from her torso, leaving her organs exposed. Flashes showcase her innards dropping to the floor. The next noticeable difference is during Danica's Freezer Trap. A few extra shots show Jeff slamming the door, trying to get out. During the Rack, Tim's limbs are shown much more, showcasing his skin tearing as the bone shatters out of his skin. The flashback fight scene between Amanda and Eric is also extended. Amanda is shown hearing Eric's cries for his son, and seems distressed. While maneuvering in the corridor, Eric sneaks up on her and the fight resumes from there. The last and most major difference is the film's ending. In the theatrical, once the montage of the victims passes by, Lynn's corpse is shown quickly, before cutting to Jeff screaming, then on Jigsaw's corpse, and finally cutting to black. In the unrated, during the montage the music slightly overlaps, skipping a couple of seconds forward, and then showing Lynn's mutilated head, zooming in on the gory details, and then slowly fading out to white.
The original theater version was also missing a soundtrack that was meant to play during the scene with Timothy Young in the Rack.
[edit] Director's Cut
A Director's Cut of Saw III was released on October 23, 2007 to coincide with the theatrical release of Saw IV on October 26. Extras on the 2-disc set include:
- Three new audio commentaries:
- 1. Writer Leigh Whannell.
- 2. Director Darren Lynn Bousman and actor J. LaRose.
- 3. Actors Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith.
- "Jigsaw's Plan" trivia game
- "Filmmaker Favs"--favorite scenes/lines/details as chosen by the production crew
- "Looking Tortured"--secrets behind selected make-up effects from the three movies
- "Choose the Death"--commentary on 10 different traps
- Music video: "Killer Inside- Messed Up World Remix" (Hydrovibe featuring Shawnee Smith)
- A clip of the first trap in Saw IV
This version of Saw III is the definitive one that Darren Lynn Bousman had originally intended (prior to being forced to edit the film seven times by the MPAA to achieve the R rating for the theatrical release), with a total running time of 121 minutes. A deleted scene reincorporated into this version of the film depicts a brutal catfight between Amanda (Shawnee Smith) and Lynn (Bahar Soomekh). In another added scene, Amanda appears to be having nightmares about kidnapping Adam before she finally decides to give him a mercy killing. This scene also reveals Jigsaw knew Amanda killed Adam. Also included is the original ending, which shows Jeff stumbling over to Lynn's corpse, playing Jigsaw's tape, then screaming before the credits begin. This tape is very much the same as the theatrical and unrated tape, except with some added lines, such as Jeff must "Pay the price for holding onto all that anger" and "driving [his] wife away from him." It is also said in a calmer, more menacing tone.
[edit] References
- ^ Hollywood Gothique: SAW IV - Darren Lynn Bousman Interview
- ^ IMDB Trivia Page
- ^ Video Clip
- ^ IGN: Interview: Darren Lynn Bousman. IGN. Retrieved on 2007-10-26.
- ^ (2007). Saw III [DVD]. Lions Gate Entertainment.
- ^ Film fans faint at Saw III show. BBC News. Retrieved on 2006-10-31.
- ^ a b c Saw III. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2006-10-29.
[edit] External links
- Official Saw III Site
- Official SAW Website & Fan Club
- Saw III at Yahoo! Movies
- Saw III at the Internet Movie Database
- Saw III at Rotten Tomatoes
| Preceded by The Prestige |
Box office number-one films of 2006 (USA) October 29, 2006 |
Succeeded by Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan |
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