Idle hands, boring movie

By the third time around, you're going to know whether you'll like "Saw III," based on your opinions of the previous two. You'll be able to look past the implausibility of a near-death old man (Tobin Bell) and his sole assistant's (Shawnee Smith) miraculous ability to kidnap so many people and create such elaborate torture devices within a horror warehouse. And how this man happens to know everything that has happened to his victims in the past few years... and how he can somehow plan out every action that will unfold over the next weeks... because damnit, who cares -- you just want to see some good old-fashioned torture scenes. You sick bastard, you. \nThe film starts right where the last one left off; with Donnie Wahlberg chained to a sink, getting ready to "play a game." After the gruesome splatter that is him reducing his foot to merely a nub with a giant rock, we return to villain Jigsaw. Now nearly on his deathbed, he's called in (kidnapped) a top-notch doctor (Bahar Soomekh, "Crash") to keep him alive while he tests his latest victim. A little catch, though; if he dies, she dies.\nIt should probably be noted that I wasn't a huge fan of the first two films, but they had their entertaining moments. This one doesn't, though. Unlike the last "Saw," there's no group of people working together. The focus is primarily on a victim-by-victim basis. With the loss of any interaction, the film drags. To have nothing but torture scenes would be too much, even for the most sadistic of audiences. Yet the stories that lie in between, what with their overblown themes of redemption, self-appreciation and forgiveness, are boring and laughable. \nYou've got to hand it to the writers (actually it's kind of disturbing), to keep thinking up various ways to physically torment the victims. There's everything from freezing to death, drowning in pig guts, ripping chains out of body parts... well, you get the picture. All of these are emphasized by lots of flashes and choppy camera work, to create an annoying, dizzying effect. In all fairness, these crappy visual tactics were probably done to avoid an NC-17 rating, rather than artistic merit.\nThe film ends with a twist ending for the sake of having a twist ending. And then another twist... and then another, then another and finally one more. The company that made the film is called Twisted Pictures, but not even the most fitting nom de plume validates this much pointlessness.