John Kramer and SAW

For those of you unfamiliar with this series John Kramer is (was) an engineer, a loving husband and a cancer patient. Coming to terms with his own mortality made Mr. Kramer aware of time, how little of it we have and how some people just squander theirs. To correct this he puts his subjects through a series of tests. If the player follows the rules they come out a better person who appreciates the life that was given to them. If they fail it ends up in a sloppy mess that is really fun for the rest of us to watch.

I just watched Saw V and was impressed. It is strange that in a series of 5 movies the best is NOT the first one. Here is why. The original Saw featured Cary Elwes as the indifferent Doctor who diagnosed John Kramer, that irritating Monica Potter as his clueless wife and Danny Glover as the well-meaning but down-the-wrong-path detective who persecutes Elwes to the point of obsession. The central theme was good and the traps were fantastic but there was just something missing. That turned out to be Tobin Bell, the actor who plays John Kramer aka Jigsaw. We didn't get to know and love him until Saw II, which I think is the best in the series.

Saw II pits Jigsaw against dirty police detective Eric Matthews (played by New Kid Donnie Walberg) who plants evidence and beats confessions out of his "criminals". All the cop has to do is listen to Mr. Kramer and play by the rules and the officer's son will be found "in a safe place". Detective Matthews, however, is too hot-headed for this and spends his time mocking and abusing the ailing, oxygen-taking Mr. Kramer. After enduring an especially brutal beating Kramer declares "game over" and follows Matthews' directions but somehow things don't work out the way the detective planned.

My least favorite was Saw III. I thought it was overly cruel to the people involved in "the game", but it did give us the first behind-the-scenes look at how Jigsaw enacted his games and who helped him to do it. I must admit that I thought the series would end here, seeing that we watched John Kramer die in his make-shift hospital bed shortly after being forgiven by his test subject, Jeff, which I thought was a beautiful touch.

Saw IV took us behind the scenes and showed us how and why Jigsaw set out on his new line of "work", the people he trusted to continue his legacy, and what exactly happened to the characters from Saw II. It was most satisfying to see how Eric Matthews' storyline played out and those fantastic bastards made us wait until the fourth movie to tell us. I was a little skeptical about the continuation of the series upon my first viewing of this one, but after several more run-throughs it really does seem to fit like a glove. They got a really cool guy to pick up where Jigsaw left off.

This brings us to Saw V. Aw, hell, this post is too long-winded as it is. Suffice it to say that Saw V is every bit as good as Saw IV. The thing with these movies is that the good-guys and bad-guys are really hard to sort out. For all the horrific scenarios that Jigsaw creates, he never actually kills anybody. They ultimately make the decision to "live or die" (of course he does drug them, kidnap them and perform surgery to lock them into the traps, but that is beside the point). There are a lot of assholes in this series who get exactly what they deserve. Too often in life we don't get to see the asshole get what's coming to them. With SAW we always do. God bless you creators, writers, directors, producers and all the other crew responsible for giving us this satisfying series!

I would like to leave this post with a question: What is your favorite SAW trap? Which is your least favorite? I would love to chime in on the comments but would prefer others to get the ball rolling.