SAW DVD Review

Anyrate speaking of Josh Becker, he has nothing to do with this film but he sure did set a great example for James Wan. Josh said it best when I recently interviewed him by saying that you can not make a good movie from a shitty script. SAW is an ok film with ok acting, but the one thing that stands out is the script. Does not matter how poor the acting is, you can not possibly screw up this movie with a script like this. The screen-writer, who also plays Adam in the movie is on the road to success if you ask me. It helps that James Wan did an amazing job in the direction, but you gotta have a script to get that far. So my hats off to the screenwriter Leigh Whannell, nice job buddy.

So lets get into the movie. The good is the script kicked some serious ass, and that translated well into the movie. The problem is the acting was really weak, with the acception of Danny Glover who played the rogue cop part perfectly. Kind of a familiar role for him, but who cares. He Rocked. The rest of the characters I could have done without. The casting was a bit off and the acting and overall chemistry or vibe as I say was weak between the Adam and Dr. Gordan characters. I found the very heavy emotional scenes flat because of the poor acting.

The one thing that kept you drawn in even despite this was the amazing story itself. I did find that the character Adam improved through the film and Leigh Whannell did a pretty good job. At least as good as the other actors. I do however wish they had cast different people in the two primary roles. Leigh your a great screen-writer but the acting at times was a bit weak, lets let actors do the acting and you go make some loot doing more great scripts like SAW 2.

The look and feel of this movie and the direction that James Wan took the film was excellent. I liked how each scene was blended seamlessly and you did not have any jerky melds between scenes. I also liked his use of lighting which reminded me alot of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and that is  a major compliment to James. Since we all know that Romero is KING here.

There were issues in the movie. I guessed who the killer was in the first 10mins. The great part was their is a sweet twist that made me grin and remind myself that Leigh Whannell can write one hell of a script. I didnt like certain aspects of the action, for example Danny Glover tossing down a perfectly good gun to tackle JigSaw. Dude you are not gonna do that. Your chasing a serial killer who is maiming and killing in sadistic and evil ways. You are going to blow his ass away, not throw down your gun to do some half ass quarterback tackle. Outside of that I got no complaints about Glover. He is the man, nuff said. I found the character Dr. Gordon really annoyed me, but again you are taking away from that by good direction and a good script.

So where do I rate this movie? I give it an 8 out of 10. Would have been a 9 if the acting was better. Leigh Whannell is a god at screenwriting in my books. I can not wait to go see his next film. Hopefully they have better actors though. James Wan also has a future ahead of him. I liked his direction, and loved how he led the film scene to scene. He worked well with a great script. So its an 8/10 with some new casting it would have been an easy 9/10 maybe a 9.5. It is very clear to me now having watched this film why it has been the #1 Thriller on our site for months.

So with that I am going back to drinking beers, smoking cigs, and watching hundreds of movies..... you dont gotta agree with me.. you can always.. Oh wait, yes you do have to agree with me. In the infamous words of Judge Dredd. I AM THE LAW!