SAW II / Darren Lynn Bousman (2005)
October 25th, 2005 by Scott Marks
Saw II (2005)
Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman
Written by: Leigh Whannell, Darren Lynn Bousman
Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Donnie Wahlberg, Erik Knudsen, Franky G, Glenn Plummer, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Leigh Whannell, Mpho Koaho, Beverley Mitchell, Tim Burd, Barry Flatman, Lyriq Bent, Dina Meyer, Noam Jenkins
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Genres: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Running Time: 91 min.
Rating: 
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell ) is a psycho who makes good on his promise: “There will be blood.”
If inventive sadism is your idea of a fun night at the movies, Saw II delivers ninety minutes of relentless screw-tightening shocks.
In spite of its nonsensical conclusion James Wan’s Saw was a engagingly grisly, brutally graphic thrill ride that delivered box office gold. With a twenty-five day shooting schedule forcing inventiveness and a tad more logic thrown into the mix, Saw II is a rarity among sequels: it’s as good as the original. Instead of two characters and a corpse, we now have eight tortured victims united by one common bond.
Bad cop Donnie Wahlberg can’t seem to reign in his teenage son (Frankie Munoz substitute Erik Knudsen) who seems well on his way to a guest spot on America’s Most Wanted. That’s all the impetus Jigsaw, a scientist when it comes to preying upon the weakness of his victims, needs to set the sequel’s mechanics in motion.
Saw II plays a clever twist on the original by placing the hero and villain, instead of the two victims, in one room. With a handful of TV monitors broadcasting closed-circuit coverage of the action, Jigsaw delights in watching the detective squirm.
The gut-churning parade kicks off with a pre-credit sequence in which the key to freedom is surgically implanted in the eye of its victim. Two choices: either pull a Bunuel and slice wide your retina or suffer the fate of a Mario Bava-inspired spiked black mask timed to turn its victim’s head into a colander. A pit of hypodermic needles, gallons of coughed-up blood and thoughts on one serial killer’s quest for immortality suggest a game of “Clue” gone terribly wrong.
Casting Saw’s Shawnee Smith, the only survivor of Jigsaw’s game, in a key role proves that a sequel was never far from the mind of the franchise’s creator. Instead of limiting the gore to one room, Saw II ‘gives us an entire tenement in which to splatter about. Nerve gas, the film references the terrorist attacks on the Tokyo subway, is being pumped into the vents and Jigsaw agrees to unlock the door one hour after the poison takes full effect.
With the exception of Tobin Bell, the rest of the actors were cast according to type. As the soft-spoken ringleader of carnage, Bell provides the prerequisite of every good horror yarn: a truly despicable antagonist. Quiet revelations of his gut-shot illness will have you cheering on the cancer.
It should come as no surprise that only a few characters live to see the final fade out and credit the filmmakers with devising several new sado-masochistic kinks. Not content to simply rearrange the narrative order of its predecessor, Saw II will not disappoint fans of the original.
Tags: Film, Jigsaw, Movie, Movie Review, Review, Saw 2, Saw II, Tobin BellFiled Under Reviews, Theatrical
ARTISTS AND ROLE MODELS: AN INTERVIEW WITH ATOM EGOYAN
October 12th, 2005 by Scott Marks
Where the Truth Lies (2005)
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Written by: Rupert Holmes, Atom Egoyan
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, David Hayman, Rachel Blanchard, Maury Chaykin, Sonja Bennett, Kristin Adams, Deborah Grover, Beau Starr, Arsinée Khanjian, Gabrielle Rose, Don McKellar, David Hemblen, John Moraitis
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Rating:
It was your typical milky-white nine a. m. in San Diego, but Atom Egoyan, on the phone from his office in Toronto, was far from gloomy.
The director spoke passionately (and rapidly) about his latest feature Where the Truth Lies, a fictionalized account of a murder that may or may not involve showbiz royalty.
Egoyan is a brilliant independent writer/director whose cold, clinical and frequently nasty films (Calendar, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) reflect a similar sensibility to that of fellow countryman David Cronenberg. While Cronenberg is a master of psychological horror, Egoyan excels at dysfunctional relationships best viewed from a distance. What better subjects than Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, comedy’s most publicly divorced duo?
It’s America in the fifties and Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth) are the country’s comedic pulse. A classic duo — Lanny is the crazy schtick comic, while British Vince is his cool and collected straight man—the boys seem equally at home wetting the eyes of adoring nightclub patrons as they do Telethon viewers hooked on their pity pitch. They are at the top of their game, wealthy, powerful, and popular beyond compare until one day when a young hotel maid inexplicably turns up dead in the boys’ suite.
The project presented Egoyan with several new hurdles to conquer. Budgeted at $25 million, it’s his biggest, most commercial film to date. It is also his first film to be shot on American soil. Perhaps the leading challenge was in the production design. This is the director’s first period, make that periods, piece; half of the film takes place at the scene of the crime, a flashback to the 1959 Annual Veteran’s Day Polio Telethon. Intercut is a distanced seventies perspective where we look back on the events through the eyes of a young journalist (Alison Lohman) wanting to clear their names.
Continue reading ARTISTS AND ROLE MODELS: AN INTERVIEW WITH ATOM EGOYAN
Tags: Atom Egoyan, Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Dean_Martin, Interview, Jerry Lewis, Martin and Lewis, Where the Truth LiesFiled Under Interviews
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