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# ‘Saw’ should have stayed on cutting floor
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/saw-should-have-stayed-on-cutting-floor/
- Published: 2004-10-29T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:21:34.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

“Three” seems a more appropriate title for this grisly offering from first-time director James Wan, because it isn’t half the movie “Seven” is. Doing his best to mimic David Fincher’s unsettling 1995 hit, Wan goes all out with shaky camera shots and stygian sets while delivering half-baked, blood-soaked sermons on a morally bankrupt society with all the subtlety of a chainsaw through a stick of butter. Problem is, atmospherics and gore alone do not a compelling serial killer thriller make. “Saw” is gratuitously violent, unoriginal and entirely too loud. Hey, is it too much to ask that every horror movie not sound like it was scored by a pimply-faced white kid with a Korn fixation?

Worst of all, this movie is hampered with a weak cast that includes Cary Elwes and Danny Glover delivering two of the most unintentionally hilarious performances in recent memory. When we meet Elwes’ nebbishy Dr. Lawrence Gordon, he’s chained up in one of those decrepit windowless chambers that are all the rage among postmodern celluloid sickos. On the opposite side of the room is another captive, a young man named Adam (Leigh Whannell, who co-wrote the script). Between them lies a dead man who appears to have blown his brains out rather than spend two hours enduring Elwes sorry act. A tape left by their mysterious abductor provides the set-up for the game of cat and mouse to follow.

Through a series of flashbacks we come to know Tapp (Glover), a homicide detective obsessed with tracking down a psychopath known as “Jigsaw.” As the body count rises and Tapp begins to emotionally unravel, Glover goes for it with all the hysteria of a drunken “Real World” cast member. This is the biggest dog of a cop performance since “Turner & Hooch.” Here’s hoping Danny turns things around in the inevitable next “Lethal Weapon” flick and saves face with anyone unfortunate enough to see “Saw.” (Rated R for strong grisly violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 29, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102904.pdf?ref=smdp.com)