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- Saws (13)
- Saw (6)
- Saw (5)
- Saw - L'Enigmista (4)
- Saw 2 - La Soluzione dell'Enigma (4)
- Saw 2 (2)
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Saw (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- 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 Peter Block Lark Bernini |
| 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 | USD 1,200,000 (estimated) |
| Followed by | Saw II |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Saw is a 2004 horror film, and the first installment of the Saw film series. It was directed by James Wan and co-written by Wan and Leigh Whannell. The movie took only 18 days to film and was filmed along side James Wan, Marcos Zarvous and Gregg Hoffman. It was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004 and saw an international release later that year on October 29. The film is #3 on Bravo's Even Scarier Movie Moments.[1] The film spawned into several sequels, Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV.
The film is focused on two men who find themselves trapped in a disused bathroom with instructions for Dr. Gordon to kill Adam, or he and his family will be killed in turn. The two characters attempt to escape while police seek the man who is responsible, the "Jigsaw Killer".
The film was originally rated NC-17 for strong graphic violence. This version is available as Saw: Uncut Edition, a DVD special edition of Saw released around the same time that Saw II was released theatrically. The difference between the R rated and the unrated version is minimal.
Contents |
The film begins when photographer Adam Faulkner (Leigh Whannell) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) wake up in a grimy industrial bathroom, chained to pipes at opposite corners. Between them, out of their reach, is a corpse (Tobin Bell) lying in a pool of blood, holding a revolver and a microcassette recorder. Both men discover envelopes in their pockets which contain microtapes; Gordon's envelope also holds a bullet and a key that does not unlock their shackles. Adam manages to snag the player from the corpse with which they play their tapes. Both tapes have the same voice distorted by a pitch modulator. Adam’s tape refers to him as a voyeur and only gives him the task of escaping. Gordon's tape reveals he must kill Adam before six o'clock, or his wife and daughter will die and he will be left in the bathroom, presumably forever. Hacksaws are soon discovered; neither is sufficiently sharp to cut chain, and Adam accidentally snaps his in frustration. Dr. Gordon realizes that the saws are meant instead for their own feet.
The film then presents flashbacks of their captor's previous victims: Paul and Mark. Both men failed to escape, and hence had pieces of skin cut from them in the shape of a jigsaw puzzle piece; thus the genesis of referring to him as the "Jigsaw Killer". Back in the bathroom, Dr. Gordon comments that this is a misnomer, as he never directly murders his victims nor places them in situations where death is unavoidable. A while later we are shown the plight of Jigsaw's 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.
After a brief sequence where Adam and Dr. Gordon discover a hidden camera, another flashback sequence shows Gordon's last moments with his family, and their subsequent abduction. Another flashback shows an attempt by detectives Tapp (Danny Glover) and Sing (Ken Leung) illegally breaking and entering into what turns out to be one of Jigsaw's lairs. The two discover a man tied to a chair with two drills mounted on each side. Before the Detectives can secure Jigsaw's arrest, he starts the drills. While Tapp subdues Jigsaw, Sing attempts to save Jeff. Jigsaw slashes Tapp's throat and leaves him injured while Sing is distracted; Tapp's partner immediately picks up the chase, only to be killed by multiple shotguns set on a tripwire.
His death has a permanent effect on Tapp, and what was already an unhealthy fascination with the case deepens into an obsession that leads to him being discharged from the police force. Convinced from a piece of evidence from earlier in the film that Dr. Gordon is the Jigsaw killer, Tapp moves into a house across the street from Gordon's and monitors it with video surveillance.
Back in the bathroom, Gordon discovers a box holding cigarettes, a lighter and a note suggesting he dip a cigarette in the corpse's poisoned blood and using it to kill Adam. Gordon and Adam attempt to fool the camera by faking Adam's death with the un-poisoned cigarette, but a strong electric shock is sent through Adam's chain, proving Adam to still be alive. The box also contains a cell phone which cannot make calls, but receives one from his wife Alison (Monica Potter), who is being held captive in her home by Jigsaw. She tells Gordon that Adam knows more than he is revealing. Adam explains that he had been paid by Detective Tapp to spy on Gordon. In the pile of Adam's photographs which he hid from view of Gordon when found with the hacksaws, the two find a photograph of an orderly at Gordon’s hospital named Zep (Michael Emerson), looking out a window in Gordon's house after he left. Just as this realization is made, however, it turns 6:00.
Allison manages to free herself and take control of Zep's handgun, however she is soon overpowered. Shots are fired, which attract the attention of Tapp, who wounds Zep as Allison and her daughter flee. He is unable to keep Zep from leaving the house, however, intent on killing Gordon, who is only aware of the sounds of screaming and gunshots. Flung into a desperate temporary insanity, he follows his instructions by sawing off his foot and shooting Adam with the revolver held by the corpse and the bullet found in his envelope.
Zep arrives, pursued by Tapp; however Zep shoots Tapp fatally. He then enters the bathroom but tells Lawrence that he still must die, as he was too late. When he asks, "Why?" Zep only responds with, "It's the rules". Adam suddenly recovers from his gunshot wound, which was in fact nonfatal, and manages to murder Zep by beating him with a toilet lid. Gordon crawls away to seek medical attention, promising to return with help, despite Adam's begging him not to leave him.
After he leaves, Adam searches Zep for a key to his chain and instead finds another micro-cassette player. As the climax theme of the series, Hello Zepp, begins, the tape informs Adam that Zep was only following instructions under threat of death. As soon as Jigsaw's familiar voice ceases, the corpse lying in the center of the bathroom slowly rises to his feet. He is John Kramer, a terminal brain cancer patient of Lawrence's. Jigsaw tells Adam that the key to his chain is in the bathtub; a quick flashback replays the opening scene of the movie, in which Adam wakes up in the bathtub and, in his instinctive flashing, unplugs the drain, causing the key to disappear with the water.
Adam reaches for Zep's gun to shoot John, but is stunned with electricity; this triggers an extended flashback sequence that runs through the vital shots of the movie in roughly 30 seconds. Just before he flicks off the lights in the bathroom for the last time, John repeats a line he said to Amanda after she escaped: "Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore." John then shouts, "Game Over!" before slamming the door shut, sealing Adam in the bathroom, screaming his despair over the credits.
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.[2]
Critical responses were mixed: the film earned a 45% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and a 29% rating from the "cream of the crop" (the most esteemed professional critics), qualifying it as "rotten."
Main Article: Saw (soundtrack)
Megadeth's song "Die Dead Enough" was supposed to be featured in the movie,[3] but it was not used for undisclosed reasons.[4]
The unrated edition of the film is approximately 8 seconds longer than the theatrical version. The additional shots included a close-up of the body on the bathroom floor, additional forensic photos, a short segment of Paul running through the razor wire maze, Amanda sifting through a man's intestines looking for the key to her trap, and Dr. Gordon sawing through his foot.
There is also an Easter egg on the uncut DVD called "See Saw in 60," which consists of three very jumpy and humorous one-minute condensed versions of the movie. Two "takes" 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 "take" is made using actual footage from the movie and the squeaky voices. There is also a similar easter egg on the Saw II Special Edition DVD called "Saw 2 in 62". One year later, on the Saw III: Director's Cut DVD, another easter egg was hidden called "Saw III in Sixty III".
- ^ PopSyndicate.com forums
- ^ http://imdb.com/title/tt0387564/business Box Office revenue
- ^ Blabbermouth.net
- ^ Blabbermouth.net
- 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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| Films | Saw (short) • Saw • Saw II • Saw III • Saw IV • Saw V |
| Characters | Jigsaw • Amanda • Gordon family • Adam • Allison • Eric • Reinhart family • Rigg • Hoffman |
| Film Soundtracks | Saw • Saw II • Saw III • Saw IV |
| Other | Traps • Billy the puppet • Pig mask • Saw: Rebirth • "Hello Zepp" |