Well apparently none of that matters to me. That or I still hold out hope for this series despite all that is going against it. Or that I am really, really bad at not knowing how things end.
But as you can see from my previous post I said I wasn’t going to pay money to see this movie. And technically I didn’t. I further plunged the economy into debt by being a bad person and watching it for free online. So technically didn’t go against my word? Maybe? GO ME!
So blah blah spoilers for the movie/entire series/my crazy thoughts lie beyond the cut. You have been warned. By now you should know the rules. And yes there are rules!
This movie wasn’t as bad as V.
Shall I come and scoop you off the floor from shock?
Now I am not going to gush about how awesome this movie is and how it’s the movie that is going to save the series. That would be going too far and if it were true that would be the true shock.
The fact is that VI was only marginally less sucky than V. A lot of people think IV was pretty bad but at least Jigsaw was still alive in 4 technically. And the “victims” were a bit in the dark about what was going on so it was hard to blame them. But it wasn’t great. It’s like broccoli is better than brussell sprouts. No one wants to eat either but most people can choke down the broccoli and will leave the brussell sprouts to rot in the corner of the kitchen.
Hoffman was not the reason VI wasn’t as bad. Hoffman is the reason the movie was still pretty bad. Because while John was a crazy man killing people….we still all kinda liked him. Yes his ideas were really out there and he was killing people and justify that he wasn’t but he was still likable. He was a murderer with values. Amanda was a murderer with some values. Hoffman is a murderer who….murders people.
Does anything make sense? I hope it does.
In the last movie Hoffman was only guilty of killing Strahm. Strahm was not being tested (despite the lame tapes that were left for him). Strahm was only killed because he was on to Hoffman. John killed the other cops because he hated cops. Err I mean he had a reason to test them (setting people up, being about of an affair, not paying attention before jumping in). Strahm was doing his job and only obsessed because everyone he knew was dead.
But in this movie Hoffman decides to not only bathe in the blood of Strahm pancake (which didn’t look as awesome bootlegged, that is my punishment) but he decided to set up dead Strahm as being Jiggy’s second apprentice. He then spends most of the movie looking constipated at pictures (seriously pouty lips=/acting) and telling the other cops that Strahm was the killer. Only the other cops were told by Jill that Hoffman is the real killer. So Hoffman does the sensible thing and kills those three cops too. Perez was THIS close to surviving the series. But now she is splatted like every other cop that step foot on a SAW set.
Putting aside that Hoffman is a real murderer and nothing like John he was really, really stupid in this movie. Particular when he learned how Strahm couldn’t be the Jigsaw accomplice. You know, when the cops were like OH the finger prints were from a dead person. So what does Hoffman do after he is doing killing the remaining cops/FBI agents/people with badges? He goes out to get the Strahm hand (which he carries everywhere like a chew toy) and covers the place in fingerprints. In Hoffman’s world he has killed every smart cop out there and no one will ever put 2 and 2 together ever again! YAY FOR WISHING!
So if this franchise thinks it has a chance with Hoffman at the wheel I am here to inform it (them/whoever) they are dead wrong. Hoffman is the reason this series is going to fry in a burning ring of fire. The actor who plays him can’t act (stick to scifi originals please), he is a murderer murderer (as opposed to someone who THINKS he is doing good work), and…I hate him.
The ending also sucked. Hoffman has gotten away with killing so many people and he gets to LIVE? Of course I was complaining that Hoffman stuck Strahm unwinnable traps so it might be a little hypocritical of me to cheer that Jill stuck Hoffman in an unwinnable trap. Whether or not that is a double standard I wish Hoffman had gotten his entire face ripped off. He deserved to die. I don’t care if it was an unfair trap or not. You reap what you sow and all that jazz.
HOWEVER how is Hoffman going to explain his injuries? Surely the new cops (the ones who will be killed in the 7th movie) will also discover that the Strahm prints are from a dead hand so how can Hoffman keep on blaming Strahm? Though….it will make him look more innocent now that I think about it. CURSES!
So it has been established that Hoffman is not the reason why this film was a tiny bit better than the last one. Jill is also not the reason. I really don’t think I need to explain Jill right? Most hard core SAW fans hate her and I am sure the casual viewer doesn’t see Jill as someone who could carry the series. So we won’t even discuss her lame contribution.
Just let me die already!
So it wasn’t Hoffman and it was Jill that saved this movie from being rated an F on the Tenchi scale. It also wasn’t the flashbacks. I think we can all agree that the flashbacks have been done to death. But at least they didn’t stoop to showing John going to Home Depot to buy nails and sheet metal. But the scenes with Hoffman and Amanda going at it like rotten siblings was a bit of a stretch. I suppose the scene that was dedicated to fans was the explanation on what was in Hoffman’s letter to Amanda. However since SAW III was written and directed by different people than SAW VI who knows if that explanation was the real explanation. Personally I think it is a bit of a stretch that Amanda is the one who help killed Jill’s baby but it does work into the story quite nicely. But overall the flashbacks feel out of place and an excuse to keep hardcore fans interested via John.
So it’s not Hoffman and it’s not Jill and it’s not the flashbacks. So what interesting about SAW VI? The victims! Unlike SAW V the victims resemble human beings. They are all tied together (like in every other SAW movie) but VI was convoluted and the focus was more on the gore rather than the lesson. The victims might have gotten more screen time but I didn’t feel connected to them and kinda cheered when they died in the end. The two “survivors” made poor decisions and killed their fellow prisoners. They didn’t learn anything so they deserved to die (if they died).
But it was different in SAW VI. Yes it was a bit of a cop out to use health care as the evil force given the current state of our country but it made sense. At least it was something most of the audience could relate to and it made SENSE unlike some bomb building thingy things.
Even though William is a insurance exec. he is about 10 percent more likable than Eric!
The movie starts off with the “main” character being a cut throat insurance/death dealing. He is the president of Umbrella Health (which sadly has nothing to do with Resident Evil) and he gets to make the tough/fun (depending on your prospective) decisions on who gets insurance and who gets cut. Which is all very interesting to me, when people who are sick get cut from insurance after being with a company for 20 years because they didn’t cross a t somewhere. Funny how their money was good for 20 years but the minute something goes wrong OH WAIT we never should have accepted your application in the first place.
And I would say hate the game not the player or hate the company not the worker but main character William is the executive of the company. So….he created the game and made the rules and makes the money from the game. So it is safe to hate him and perhaps not the other “victims” in our story.
I say the victims are the ones who saved this movie but I am not happy with how they picked the first victim. The janitor, not the other two people that start off the movie. Although home girl was pretty awesome/X_X for chopping off her own arm. There is a person who has learned a thing or two from the SAW movies. Putting that aside I think the janitor got screwed royally. Is John seriously picking on people who smoke now? Did he run out of people who are genuinely bad and need to change their ways? Am I next because all I eat is pizza and Froot Loops and I don’t respect my body enough to eat veggies? Yeah not really sensing how that was fair but moving on.
SAW VI mirrors SAW III as the main character has control over whether people live or die. Jeff had to save the lives of people he hated and William has to save the lives of people that did nothing wrong but work for his slime ball company. William was slightly more successful than Jeff and was a LOT quicker to act. William also had to do a lot of damage to himself to save people while Jeff kinda got off easy.
The victims and the traps go hand in hand. Who the victims were and how the traps played out made this movie ten times better than VI. In VI it was who can I kill to make it to the next room while VI was actually trying to help people out and give them at least a fighting chance (except for janitor man). Some fans might like the traps better when the true victim is the one who decides the consequences but I like it when the main character holds all the cards. To me those victims are already dead (hence John being a murderer) and them being saved is a bonus. The real change lies within Williams so everyone else really doesn’t matter.
Which doesn’t make the games fair mind you. It just means the game really weren’t meant for the people in them but for William. And his game is to show him the value of human life and to show him how horrible it is to pick who lives and who dies.
I think William has also been following the SAW cases and learns his lesson WAY early on. Instead of making the practical choice of saving the younger male Allen he choices to save the sickly woman Addy because she has family. I am not the evil head to a villainous insurance company but even I would have picked Allen. But William LEARED that human life has no value on it blah blah blah.
And they all fall down!
My favorite trap was the carousel of death. Again none of these people had a chance to save themselves. But they could have pleaded their case a little bit better than they did. The mother, the first saved victim, did an excellent job of saying why she should live. But the other 5 were all really crappy human beings and William was nice to save one of their sorry butts. When push comes to shove though some people will bash on someone else to save their own asses instead of stating why THEY deserve to live.
So William saves as many people as he can and loses about 2 pints of blood in the process. His test is over and he makes it to the end of the hall to reunite with is his family. Only his family is the reporter lady (which….added nothing to the storyline) and not the lady and her son. No no, those two people are related to someone that Williams “killed” by denying him insurance or something. Now…that really isn’t fair. Just because Williams denied some dude insurance means that he wanted him to die or that the guy’s only option was to die. He could have paid out of pocket and been in debt up to his eyeballs or had insurance and died ANYWAY because cancer kinda does that.
But the point is that William learns the hard way that his actions have consequences. He learned to be a better person but that doesn’t erase all the pain and hurt he has done in the past. William learns the value of human life but Brent didn’t. Brent is too upset that William killed his dad to see that William has become a better person. Again this might be unfair but that is how life is. You can’t do 658967 horrible things, have a Scourge epiphany, and then have everyone love you. That is not how life works sometimes. Sometimes the son of the person you “killed” will push the kill button and you will melt in half. Just a fact of life.
Long post has gotten LONG. So let me try to wrap things up the best I can. Hoffman is killing the series with his boring personality and lack of soul. The flashbacks have seriously been milked for all they are worth. They are no more little boxes with John’s last requests. And the police force has been reduced to one fat cop and the guy who handles the evidence locker.
However the storyline regarding the victims was one of the best so far. I would say almost as good as SAW II. SAW III had a better twist with MOG Lynn is Jeff’s wife than GASP these people are not William’s family but overall the storyline was better than VI and V. I actually cared whether or not William lived which is more than I can say of the cast of V. Besides the blond of course who never stood a chance.
But we can’t have a movie with just good victims and good traps. We need someone to carry out these traps and their storyline to be interesting. So I don’t know where this series can go besides the toilet.
However…SAW VI was not the complete and utter failure I thought it was going to be. I am glad I didn’t waste my money but a little sad the death scenes were hard to watch dude to my stealing abilities.
I give this movie a Tenchi rating of a C- and that is a little generous. Quit while you are behind SAW creators.
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