Saw III

The deftly marketed Saw burst into theaters in October of 2004, melding a typical Fangoria subscriber's appetite for gore with all the reversals and head feints you might find in a labyrinthine bank heist thriller. The results were a Halloween sensation and an obligatory sequel, which combined have pushed the worldwide theatrical box office receipts of the franchise to just under $250 million. At the center of the Saw films is the cancer-stricken, preternaturally calm sociopath known as Jigsaw, aka John Kramer (Tobin Bell), a marionette master of human dread who in his mind doesn't really commit murder but merely put people "who don't fully appreciate life" into wildly contrived, mousetrap scenarios by which they make grotesque, bloody and painful choices that then seal their own fate. Already on his deathbed in Saw II, this sequel finds Jigsaw's onetime victim turned impetuous accomplice, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), working with him to pull off one last intricate chess game. Amanda kidnaps a doctor, Lynn (Bahar Soomekh), to keep the terminally ill Jigsaw alive long enough to watch this macabre test. She does this by affixing a bomb collar around Lynn's neck with a trigger mechanism linked to Jigsaw's heart rate. (Um, reverse Speed… on your head?) The quarry in Jigsaw's game is Jeff (an unfocused Angus Macfadyen, a long way from his successful channeling of Orson Welles in Cradle Will Rock and Peter Lawford in The Rat Pack). A father wracked with guilt and rage over the death of his young son in an automobile accident, Jeff makes his way past various strung-up, culpable parties (an eyewitness who failed to testify, the criminal trial judge, etc.), deciding whether to absolve them and save them from their deaths. This leads all the way to the man Jigsaw claims is ultimately responsible for the death of his child. Naturally, Jigsaw has withheld a few key details from Lynn, Jeff and even Amanda about the interrelated nature of all these parties, and the true aim(s) of
	Published: 2006-10-28 Provider: IGN
Keywords: Saw III reviews, review