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Back Shelf Beauties
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Saw II I was a huge fan of the first Saw. Along with being a surprise hit from out of nowhere, I thought it was scary, puzzling and had a great, shocking ending all in a neat, simple package. However, Saw II only has minimal participation from the original duo behind Saw (Leigh Wannell and James Wan), so some of the originality and mystery has been replaced with typical Hollywood twists, turns, characters and story. At least, the ending is still good. Tobin Bell is back as Jigsaw - a serial killer who plays wicked mind games with his victims, who don't appreciate life and all it has to offer. To lure out Detective Eric Mason (Donnie "I'm Not Marky Mark But Maybe I'm Johnny Drama" Wahlberg), Jigsaw has kidnapped 8 people, including Mason's son Daniel (Erik Knudson) and Amanda (Shawnee Smith) - a former victim who survived her terrifying ordeal in the first Saw (the lady with the medieval contraption on her head). Jigsaw has told all 8 that they can save themselves by following the rules of his game and solving the puzzle of what they have in common, while Mason and his fellow officers watch on monitors trying to convince the evil madman to give up the location of this house of horrors. To make the game a little more interesting and ghoulish, the 8 will die from a poisonous gas within 3 hours if they can't escape. What do all 8 have in common? Can Mason solve the puzzle and save his son before it is too late? Why does Jigsaw want to torture Mason like this? Saw II almost was a total loss until the end, which almost saves the movie. Writer/director Darren Lynn Bousman (along with co-writer Leigh Wannell, who might not have much to do with the script) fails to make it all flow together in a way that lets the audience play along and try to solve the mystery. We don't learn enough about the 8 people in the house, and 4 of them are totally meaningless window dressing. He provides some decent dialogue between the characters, but nothing deep and meaningful enough to remember, since most of the script is designed to get to the gory scenes with as little interference from the actors as possible. Yes, we get some information about the different characters and some hints to the links between them, but Bousman almost imposes the ending on the film, suddenly showing us the vital information (and some information we did not see with our own eyes) to prove his point. However, it's a great twist and a shocking ending that is almost worth the price of admission. No one in the cast will win an Academy Award, but Wahlberg and Dina Meyer (playing his partner) show us exactly how NOT to play a cop on TV or in a movie. Both desperately want their characters to come off as hard-boiled, tough as nails cops, to the point where I thought I might be watching a Dragnet parody. Wahlberg gets a reason and opportunity to change his tone, but Meyer never does anything special. Even the group of 8 in the house can't take advantage of the natural drama to draw us in. Smith is wooden and borderline ridiculous as the emotionally damaged woman who survived the ordeal once before, while Franky G stomps and snorts his way through each scene to the point of being silly. He has that inability to show intensity you get from most actors, so, like most actors, he shouts his lines for emphasis. Saw II is not as gory as you might think, but still too shocking for most. I kept getting the feeling everyone involved in Saw II was trying too hard and forgot how the first movie succeeded due to its simplicity. Two guys trapped in a room is much more interesting than 8 people running around a house, even if 2 of the runners are hot babes. 2 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2005 - WaffleMovies.com
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