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I made sure to watch SAW III in broad daylight, so that I wouldn’t go to sleep immediately afterwards and have nightmares. When the movie ended, I promptly listened to ten Frank Sinatra songs so that my subconscious could reprogram itself and I wouldn’t be left emotionally traumatized by the extreme brutality in the movie. Let me start from the beginning. I pop in the DVD, and in the first scene, I just hear a guy hollering and screaming, lights flashing, and I’m like, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” Oh, its just Detective Eric Matthew’s (Donnie Wahlberg) big mouth. Somehow I manage to grab a glimpse of a foot in a shackle, and some kind of a saw.

Then I hear all this crunching, and I thinking to myself, “IS THIS GUY TRYING TO CUT OFF HIS FOOT? Then I hear all the screaming, then the movie starts. Well, that’s it, I’m emotionally scarred for life, but for the sake of bringing you this review, I watched on.

Saw III takes over where the second one left off, when Detective Matthews does stupid stuff and ends up being captured by Jigsaw’s emo assistant, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith). Detective Matthews didn’t cut his foot off, he just broke his ankle in order to escape, but I’m not so sure that was a good idea. What was he going to do, hop or crawl to safety? And where would that be, I reckon? What he should have done was calm down and play dead, so that when Amanda comes to check up on him, he can knock the crap out of her. 

Now there is another death near the beginning of the movie, but its relatively unimportant, so lets move on now. Two more people are captured, a man (Angus Macfadyen) grieving over his deceased son (victim of a hit and run), and a doctor (Bahar Soomekh). You know, these people must live in the suburbs, because us city folks are trained for combat. I mean, just think about it.

If Emo Amanda, and old goat face Jigsaw are the only ones doing the kidnapping, I could do some serious kung fu on both of them before they even thought about capturing me. Moving on, Amanda attaches a booby trapped collar to the doomed doctor. Her test? To keep Jigsaw alive until her husband (oops, I just gave it away, yes, she is married to the man with the grieving son, however, you don’t find that out until the movie is almost over) pass his tests.

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Oh, I forgot to mention, the collar that the doomed doctor is wearing is hooked up to Jigsaw’s heart monitor, so if it flatlines, or if she tries to escape, then boom! Okay so doctor starts surgery in this dungeon-she splits open his skull after giving him a local anesthesia. Huh? Is this a new procedure or something? Whatever, okay doomed doctor, this is your chance, you don’t have to end his life, just give him a drug to make him slip into a deep sleep, then deal with emo chick.

Sigh. Must I do all the thinking here? Of course none of my brilliant ideas are utilized, and to make a long story short, she ends up dead near the end of the movie. Now to grieving man. There’s not much to say about him. He goes from one test to another, encountering people who were involved (directly and indirectly) to his son’s death. His job? To forgive and rescue them from the traps set by jigsaw. Needless to say, he does a horrible job at this, and is the last man standing. He finally makes it to Jigsaw’s room, shoots Amanda, and now he has two choices.

Does he allow Jigsaw to call an ambulance to rescue doomed doctor that’s fading away fast, or does he takes his nasty revenge, and send Jigsaw to the Rubix Cube in the sky? Needless to say, he takes the dumb route, slicing Jigsaw’s throat, who ends up getting the last laugh by activating the collar, and locking the door they’re occupying.

I see I’m gonna have to write a couple of books. First one, How Not to Get Captured by Weirdos, and the second, How to Stay Alive as a character in a horror film. I give the movie four stars, minus 1 1/2 stars for the extreme and unnecessary torture. So lets see 4 minus 1 1/2 equals 2 1/2.