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Saw III

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Saw III
Saw III Promotional Poster
Directed byDarren Lynn Bousman
Written byJames Wan
Leigh Whannell
Produced byJames Wan
Leigh Whannell
Mark Burg
Gregg Hoffman
StarringTobin Bell
Shawnee Smith
Angus Macfadyen
Bahar Soomekh
Donnie Wahlberg
Dina Meyer
Leigh Whannell
Costas Mandylor
CinematographyDavid A. Armstrong
Edited byKevin Greutert
Music byCharlie Clouser
Distributed byLionsgate
Twisted Pictures
Release date
October 27, 2006
Running time
Theatrical cut
107 min.
Unrated cut
112 min.
Director's Cut
120 min.
CountriesUnited States
Canada
LanguageEnglish
Budget$12,000,000
Box office$164,874,275[1]

Saw III is the third installment in the Saw series, released upon October 27, 2006. The film is a joint effort of both the first Saw's writers/directors, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and Saw II's writer/director, Darren Lynn Bousman.

The film focuses on the resurfaced Jigsaw Killer, the antagonist of the previous films, who works with his unstable apprentice Amanda to finish his final tests before he dies. The film contains additional back-story about the two antagonists.

The film has been dedicated to Gregg Hoffman, producer of the first two movies. Hoffman died on December 4, 2005, shortly after the official Lions Gate Entertainment announcement of Saw III.

Plot

This film begins immediately after the end of Saw II, with Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) escaping the bathroom he was left in by breaking his foot with a toilet lid to slip out of his ankle chain (although his first thought was to amputate it after seeing the severed foot of Dr. Lawrence Gordon). Later flashbacks depict his vicious fight with Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), who eventually overcomes him and leaves him for dead. Before she leaves, Matthews shouts several angry parting comments, calling Amanda a "junkie bitch" and telling her she is not Jigsaw, causing her evident distress. What she does next is not revealed at this time. Other flashbacks show that Amanda had been working with John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell), prior to the events of the second film, and had been the one who actually carried out the abduction of Adam under Jigsaw's orders. After the events of the first film, it is revealed, she had suffocated Adam in a mercy killing.

The film's present is set six months after Matthews' capture; he has been missing this entire time. Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer), Lieutenant Rigg (Lyriq Bent) and Forensic Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) are investigating the corpse of Jigsaw's latest victim Troy (J. Larose), who had to flee from a bomb by ripping out chains attached to his body. They are intrigued by the fact that his trap was inescapable (a break in Jigsaw's modus operandi). When Kerry returns home, she is kidnapped and awakens in a Jigsaw trap. She is suspended in the air and her ribs are pinned to a device that unlocks with a key dropped in a beaker of acid. When the escape method given fails and Amanda arrives, Kerry realizes this trap is also inescapable and her rib cage is fatally torn apart.

A dying Jigsaw orders the abduction of two more victims: a skilled but depressed doctor named Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) and Jeff Reinhart (Angus Macfadyen), a father obsessed with revenge against the driver who killed his son. A collar holding five loaded shotgun shells, wirelessly connected to Jigsaw's heart monitor, is placed around Lynn’s neck by Amanda. The game is simple: keep John alive until Jeff completes his tests. If Jigsaw dies or if she tries to leave the area, a flatline indicator on the monitor will cause the collar device to fire.

Meanwhile, Jeff is led through an abandoned meatpacking plant where he is given the choice of rescuing three prime targets of revenge from a variety of lethal traps. Jeff's reluctant attempts are mostly unsuccessful. He fails to rescue the bystander Danica Scott who did nothing to help him after his son was hit, and she freezes to death. Although he is able to save the lenient Judge Halden (Barry Flatman) from drowning in a pit being filled with liquefied pig corpses, the latter is shot accidentally as Jeff tries and fails to save his son's killer, Timothy Young (Mpho Koaho), from a device that slowly twists the victim's limbs and head until the bones shatter. Timothy Young dies when his neck is fatally broken by the device. With his tests nonetheless complete, Jeff leaves to find Jigsaw.

Lynn succeeds in keeping John alive, but during the course of an improvised brain surgery, he semi-consciously professes his love for a woman named Jill during a dream. Amanda believes his words are directed toward Lynn. After the operation, Lynn and John talk privately and it is revealed that Lynn's ordeal has given her a new appreciation of her life and family.

Now disillusioned with John's attempts to change his victims' perspective, Amanda admits to him that she set up the inescapable traps for Troy and Kerry. She refuses to release Lynn, despite John's pleading, and instead shoots her in the back. Lynn falls into Jeff's arms as he enters the room, whereupon he shoots and fatally wounds Amanda using a gun he has picked up in the warehouse. As Amanda bleeds to death, John tells her that she has failed the test he set up for her: "Your will is being tested--your will to keep someone alive." These words, spoken as if meant for Lynn, were instead directed toward Amanda, who had not known until this point that Jeff and Lynn were married.

John now offers Jeff the chance to forgive him or take revenge, since he is responsible for the torment he caused Jeff and his wife throughout this game. If Jeff forgives him, John will call an ambulance to save Lynn. As Jeff says, "I forgive you," he picks up a circular saw and slashes John's throat as the door to the room closes and locks. As John slowly bleeds to death, he plays a micro-cassette recorder in his hand delivers the message that he himself was the final test of forgiveness, and by killing him, Jeff has failed. In addition, John is the only person who knows where Jeff's daughter Corbett is hidden, and Jeff will have to play another game in order to find her before her air supply runs out. As the recording ends, John flatlines, causing Lynn's collar to detonate, killing her. Jeff is left screaming in despair as a montage of all the traps in the film series to date flashes by. The movie ends with a shot of John's corpse lying on the bed and a bloody stump in the place of Lynn's head.

Cast

The full cast list can be found at the Lionsgate website, under "Production Notes."

Production

According to the director's audio track on the DVD release, almost all the transitions from one place to another (such as from Kerry's trap to Chris' place, and Jigsaw's lair to Jeff's crate) were not made using digital effects. The transitions were shot on the spot. So when the camera moves from Troy's crime scene to Kerry being in the bathtub, Dina Meyer had to run, take off all her clothes, and jump into the tub. If you look closely, you can still see the water moving from when she got in.

According to Leigh Whannell, Adam had a lot more scenes in the original film, one of which was the scene between Adam and Amanda, included on the Saw III DVD bonus features.

According to producer Daniel J. Heffner, the film was toned down 7 times to obtain the "R" rating. According to director Darren Lynn Bousman, the MPAA ratings board was less concerned with the film's graphic violence because television shows like CSI have expanded the scope of what is acceptable viewing with their graphic depictions of crime scenes and autopsies. Bousman says the MPAA is more concerned with emotional torture that disturbs the audience.[2]

Promotion

File:Shawneetobinmj9.jpg
From left to right: Tobin Bell, Darren Lynn Bousman and Shawnee Smith at Spike TV's Scream Awards.

A scene from Saw III was planned to be shown when the action/thriller film Crank opened in theaters on September 1. However, the MPAA did not allow it, due to the scene's large amount of graphic violence. For similar reasons, an early teaser trailer for the movie was removed from the official Saw III site. The next trailer released featured flashbacks of Jigsaw attaching the "reverse bear trap" to Amanda and applying his makeup for posing as the corpse in the bathroom from Saw. The ads played up Saw's yearly release dates with the tagline, "If it's Halloween, it must be 'Saw'"

Around 1,000 special posters were made and sold for $20 each in support of Saw III. The posters were made with a small amount of Tobin Bell's blood (mixed with the printing ink). One such poster was also signed by the entire cast and crew of the film, and was auctioned off. All the proceeds from the auctioned poster were donated to the Red Cross.[3]

At Spike TV's Scream Awards on October 10, 2006, Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith appeared on stage with director Darren Lynn Bousman. Smith pinned Bousman to a chair, saying "Payback's a bitch," while Bell staged sawing off the top of Bousman's head. Smith then found a blood-saturated piece of film on his brain. This led to a "World Premiere" trailer featuring the plight of Troy in the body chains trap.

In a promotional video featured on MySpace (with similar versions made for YouTube and Break.com), Billy, Jigsaw's puppet, addresses the viewer in the same fashion as in the videos in the film. He states, "Hello. Are you watching me on MySpace? Good. I'd like to play a game with you. Up until now you've...just sat there as a voyeur, watching other people in their videos without care about who that person is. Well, what do voyeurs see when they look into the mirror? Let's find out. Right now you are being watched. If you forget for one second that you're being watched, you will lose. Your only way out is to understand these numbers: 1, 0, 2, 7, 0, 6. Find the meaning and you will live. Just remember; knowledge changes everything."[4] The numbers represent the film's release date, October 27, 2006.

The original cut of the movie ran for slightly over two hours, and several scenes have been confirmed to have been cut out, including a scene shown being filmed on... depicted an extended scene of Kerry and Rigg examining Troy's trap, where Kerry reveals to Rigg she has had nightmares about Eric, and she blames herself for what happened to him.

There was also reference in an interview with Bousman of a scene that was not shown Jigsaw questioning if he was correct in his goal: He begins to question because he's near the very end, maybe this wasn't right. Maybe none of this really worked. Maybe he is a murderer. Maybe he is a killer... For the first time, we actually see him break down and cry. Imagine your entire life's work. You're on your deathbed. You know there's nothing else you can do and here's how you'll be remembered: as a killer, as a murderer. Not as someone who helped people. Not as someone who changed lives. Someone who took away lives. The one thing he didn't want to be and, as he's on his deathbed, he's realizing this.[5] The audio commentary also notes that Leigh Whannell's character of Adam had more screen time, including a scene in which he passes by Amanda at the entrance of his apartment that was also included on the DVD.[6]

Reception

At screenings in the United Kingdom, three people were reported to have fainted at separate cinemas, resulting in ambulances needing to be called.[7]

Rotten Tomatoes.com gave the film a 26% rating, qualifying it as "Rotten."

Box office

Playing in 3,167 theaters Saw III grossed a total of $33,610,391 on its opening weekend.[1] With a production budget of $9.98 million,[1] the film was already considered a box office success. Saw III ended up grossing $80,238,724 domestically and $150,907,724 worldwide. As of May 2008, the film has made $164,874,275, making Saw III the most successful film in the series worldwide thus far.[1]

Soundtrack

Main article: Saw III soundtrack

DVD releases

The DVD was released on January 23, 2007 in two versions, both of which have the same bonus features:

  • R-rated (108 min.) fullscreen
  • Unrated (113 min.) Anamorphic widescreen and fullscreen
  • Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0 tracks
  • 3 commentary tracks:
  • Deleted scenes including the fight scene between Amanda and Lynn and the extra scene with Adam and Amanda.
  • "The Traps of Saw III"
  • "The Details of Death: The Props of Saw III"
  • "Darren's Diary: Anatomy of a Director"
  • Trailers

Also confirmed are two exclusive featurettes to the Blu-ray Disc release of Saw III, which includes a feature on the writing of Saw III, and an "Amanda: Evolution of a Killer" featurette. These featurettes were also included on an exclusive 2-disc edition, sold at Target stores in the US and Future Shop stores in Canada. They contain the Unrated Widescreen Edition on Disc 1.

Unrated Edition

The unrated DVD, released on January 23, 2007, features a 113-minute cut of the film that includes more gore. On the commentary track, Bousman notes that this is not his original, two-hour-plus cut of the film, and that is why he released the Director's Cut in October 2007.

The unrated version of Saw III differs from the theatrical in many ways. The first noticeable difference is that the opening scene is more violent. The shots of Eric's heel being broken are much closer, and more detail is shown. When Kerry is discussing Eric with Rigg, the scene is slightly extended, showing her commenting on how she can't sleep because of his disappearance. When Kerry's trap triggers, a frontal shot is shown of her ribs being torn from her torso, leaving her organs exposed. Flashes showcase her innards dropping to the floor. The next noticeable difference is during Danica's Freezer Trap. A few extra shots show Jeff slamming the door, trying to get out. During the Rack, Tim's limbs are shown much more, showcasing his skin tearing as the bone shatters out of his skin. The flashback fight scene between Amanda and Eric is also extended. Amanda is shown hearing Eric's cries for his son, and seems distressed. While maneuvering in the corridor, Eric sneaks up on her and the fight resumes from there. The last and most major difference is the film's ending. In the theatrical, once the montage of the victims passes by, Lynn's corpse is shown quickly, before cutting to Jeff screaming, then on Jigsaw's corpse, and finally cutting to black. In the unrated, during the montage the music slightly overlaps, skipping a couple of seconds forward, and then showing Lynn's mutilated head, zooming in on the gory details, and then slowly fading out to white.

The original theatrical version was also missing a soundtrack that was meant to play during the scene with Timothy Young in the Rack.

Director's Cut

A Director's Cut of Saw III was released on October 23, 2007 to coincide with the theatrical release of Saw IV on October 26. Extras on the 2-disc set include:

  • Three new audio commentaries:
    • 1. Writer Leigh Whannell
    • 2. Director Darren Lynn Bousman and actor J. Larose (who portrayed "Troy")
    • 3. Actors Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith (who portrayed "Jigsaw" and "Amanda" respectively)
  • "Jigsaw's Plan" - A trivia game.
  • "Filmmaker Favs" - Texts about the favorite scenes/lines/details as chosen by the production crew and certain cast members.
  • "Looking Tortured" - Featurette explaining how to replicate certain make-up effects from the three movies.
  • "Choose the Death" - Commentary on 10 different traps (Primarily from Saw II and Saw III)
  • Music video: "Killer Inside- Messed Up World Remix" (Hydrovibe featuring Shawnee Smith)
  • A clip of the first trap in Saw IV

This version of Saw III is the definitive one that Darren Lynn Bousman had originally intended (prior to being forced to edit the film by the MPAA for the theatrical release), with a total running time of 121 minutes. A deleted scene reincorporated into this version of the film depicts a brutal catfight between Amanda and Lynn. In another added scene, Amanda appears to be having nightmares about kidnapping Adam before she finally decides to give him a mercy killing. This scene also reveals Jigsaw knew Amanda killed Adam. Also included is the original ending, which shows Jeff stumbling over to Lynn's corpse, playing Jigsaw's tape, then screaming before the credits begin.

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Saw III". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2006-10-29.
  2. ^ Hollywood Gothique: SAW IV - Darren Lynn Bousman Interview
  3. ^ IMDB Trivia Page
  4. ^ Video Clip
  5. ^ "IGN: Interview: Darren Lynn Bousman". IGN. Retrieved 2007-10-26.
  6. ^ Saw III (DVD). Lions Gate Entertainment. 2007.
  7. ^ "Film fans faint at Saw III show". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
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Preceded by Box office number-one films of 2006 (UK)
October 29, 2006 		Succeeded by
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