Sinners and Saints

Directed by William Kaufman.

2010. Rated R, 104 minutes.
Cast:
Johnny Strong
Kevin Phillips
Costas Mandylor
Sean Patrick Flanery

Bas Rutten
Method Man
Kim Coates
Tom Berenger
Jurgen Prochnow
Brooklyn Sudano
Jolene Blalock

Wanna see a good old fashioned shoot ‘em up? Well, it’s not quite old fashioned. This isn’t some black and white western where the smoke from a revolver and the bad guy slumping over then falling off his horse is as graphic as it gets. Au contraire mon frère. This is thousands of rounds being fired from all manner of weaponry. We literally see the hole as its being created for every shot that hits a human body, complete with blood gushing out. Take that into consideration before pressing play. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, have at it.

To put you even more at ease, or disturb you further, Sinners and Saints plays like a remake of the first Lethal Weapon, only gorier. The major “modern” update is that this movie is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. As you may know from the Nicolas Cage vehicle Bad Lieutenant, nothing good happens in ‘Nawlins these days. Ever. Johnny Strong stars as Mel Gibson…er…uh…Det. Sean Riley. Trust me, his real name is far more suited to the character. Instead of putting his own gun in his mouth when he wakes up every morning, he drives down to the cemetery where his son is buried to keep himself depressed. Actually, he sleeps there on most nights. His boy died of leukemia over a year ago and his wife left him shortly after. Apparently, the only thing that makes him feel better is killing people. He does this with great regularity. First on the list is a gang of bad guys he and his partner try to bust in a rickety old house. The partner does something incredibly dumb and takes a bullet in the throat from the obligatory random black drug dealers holed up inside. Of course, Riley goes to work. Gotta establish how much of a badass he is, right? Why yes, the partner dies.

It takes a little while, but we eventually meet our hero’s new partner, Danny Glover. Oops, I meant to say Det. Will Ganz (Phillips). Will is definitely a younger version of Glover's Murtaugh. This means we unfortunately don’t get to hear him say “I’m too old for this…” Otherwise, he’s much the same: black with a wife and two kids he looks forward to seeing at the end of every shift. They keep him grounded, so he’s a lot more level-headed, meaning boring, than Riley. The most interesting part about him is that his lovely wife is played by Brooklyn Sudano who played Vanessa on the sitcom “My Wife and Kids.” This is also the most interesting thing about her, too. Anyhoo, Det. Will is played by Kevin Phillips. This bears mentioning because he’s not even one-tenth the actor Danny Glover is. He delivers every line as if he’s reading it aloud directly from the script. It’s a cringe-worthy performance. Surprisingly, the best acting is done by the underused Method Man. He’s the only one who even makes an attempt at a New Orleans accent. Speech patterns aside, his character is actually interesting and interesting to look at. More of him wouldn’t have hurt.

Believe it, or not, there is a plot. Someone has been slaughtering whole houses full of people. A reporter and his family get killed, later a fake ID maker and his cohorts, etc. At least one person in each case is set on fire, doused, and set on fire a few more times until dying. Nice. Well, its up to our heroes Super Mel and Bland Danny to figure out how these cases are related and catch whoever is responsible. Meanwhile, Super Mel is being investigated by Internal Affairs because people keep winding up dead in his presence. By the way, Tom Berenger plays the ornery captain that keeps tabs on him.

The problem with S and S is that it gets to be rather silly without being aware of this, at all. Like many cop flicks before it, and as I’ve already beaten into the ground, the construct is pretty much ripped from Lethal Weapon, but it has none of that franchises sense of humor. It’s a somber, brooding affair that takes itself dreadfully serious. Meanwhile, Super Mel is routinely outdueling groups of high-powered automatic weapon wielding professional killers with just his nine millimeter and athletic prowess. Why yes, these pro killers are expert shots whenever they’re not shooting at our hero. It starts out as cool, but as Super Mel does more and more amazing feats it gets to be overwhelming. My brother watched it with me and he put it best: “All this dude’s missing is a cape.”

MY SCORE: 5/10

Saw: The Final Chapter

Directed by Kevin Greutert.

2010. Rated R, 90 minutes.
Cast:
Tobin Bell
Costas Mandylor
Betsy Russell
Cary Elwes
Sean Patrick Flanery
Gina Holden
Laurence Anthony
Chad Donella

Jigsaw (Bell) is back! Well, sorta. He’s actually been dead for several movies now. To be sure, this is America’s favorite torture-porn franchise and it’s back for a seventh installment. We still get to see our twisted game master through flashbacks and hear his voice on all those ominous tapes that explain those games. I swear, this guy has left behind more recordings than Tupac. As has been the case for the  last couple movies, Jigsaw’s work is carried on by Det. Hoffman (Mandylor) who finds himself in a war with Jigsaw’s widow Jill Tuck (Russell). You may remember she ended Saw VI by  trying to kill him. She enlists the help of Det. Gibson (Donella) who apparently knows and has a beef with Hoffman. Finally, there’s Bobby (Flanery of Boondock Saints fame). He’s a Jigsaw survivor who’s written a best-seller about his ordeal.

As you can see there are a lot of pieces to this jigsaw puzzle. Unfortunately, when they’re put together they still don’t make any sense. The biggest problem is we have two different movies going on at the same time. On one hand, we have the Hoffman/Jill fued. This tries to advance the plot from the better than expected part VI, but it hardly feels like a Saw flick. On  the other hand, the story of Bobby, along with brief but gruesome asides involving a love triangle and a group of racists, seems to fit the franchise motif. Sadly, neither storyline seems to have anything to do with the other. Helping to fog things up even more, the movie itself appears to have no idea who’s doing what. Rhyme and reason are this chapter’s real casualties. They are left for dead as we rush along to see how the next person will die.

Many a horror flick has been guilty of that same exact sin. For various reasons, I’ve enjoyed lots of them. One of those reasons is the morbid sense of humor on display. The Final Chapter has no sense of humor whatsoever. Like the rest of the franchise, it takes itself dreadfully serious. Our dueling plots joylessly lurch forward dragging our butchered carcass through the murderous traps until we rach perhaps the most eye-rollingly bad climax of the series.

There are plenty of disgusting moments for gore-hounds. The human body is cut, impaled, squashed and ripped apart. More accurately, a number of painfully obvious dummies and rubber body parts are mutilated. This is a sad step down from the rest of the series which got the gore part right in even the worst of the series. Still, these scenes are what people come for and are easily the highlight of the film. The rest of it lacks both cohesion and a funny bone, making us feel like the ones in an inescapable trap. The makers have claimed this will be the last of the Saw movies. If this is the best they could muster for then I hope it truly is “game over.”

MY SCORE: 2/10

Saw VI

Directed by Kevin Greutert.
2009. Rated R, 92 minutes.
Cast:
Tobin Bell
Costas Mandylor
Betsy Russell
Mark Rolston
Peter Outerbridge
Athena Karkanis
Shawnee Smith
Samantha Lemole

Yeah!!! The crowning jewel of the torture porn empire gives us installment number six. Just in case you’ve no clue what the series is about, let me help. Jigsaw (Bell) is a twisted soul who borrows much from the philosophy of John Doe of the movie Seven. Jigsaw finds people he feels are evil or take life for granted, kidnaps them and puts them in “games” that are nearly impossible to survive in order to teach them a lesson. Of those that do manage to make it out with their lives are usually maimed for their efforts. He’s also stricken with an undeniably fatal form of cancer and has actually been dead for the last couple movies. However, being the Tupac of cinematic nutjobs, he keeps posthumously releasing previously unused material, commanding others to do his bidding from beyond the grave.

At the risk of spoiling the previous entry, I have to tell you that Detective Hoffman (Mandylor) is now administering the games and carrying out Jig’s pre-death orders. Much to Hoffman’s chagrin, he has to work with Jill (Russell), the old man’s widow. Even worse, his co-workers seem painfully close to figuring this whole thing out.

This time around, the person Jigsaw decides is in need of a lesson is William Easton (Outerbridge). He’s one of the top dogs at a health insurance company. He also takes great pride and joy in denying as many claims as possible. Of course, this acquits both the government and corporate America in the fight over health care to some degree but, let’s move on.

Unlike most franchises that are fortunate, or unfortunate enough to make it to part six, the story is still fascinating. Better yet, it is a definite improvement over part five. Though it strains a bit and relies heavily on the use of flashbacks, the saga is still developing in an interesting manner. True, the flashbacks are a gimmicky way to keep the main character, and a few others involved, and they’ve added the never-really-slick trick of bringing someone back from the dead (not Jigsaw, thankfully). Still, both are done well and add to the proceedings. The prerequisite twist at the end also works and there are actually two of them. The one involving the insurance man is the much better of the two, but the other is solid. The latter is also more important to continuing the franchise. Yes, Saw VII…ahem…Saw 3D will hit theaters, shortly.

Then, there are the games. They are still the inventive, nasty and downright heinous affairs we’ve come to love. For instance, the game that opens the movie takes a quite literal interpretation of sacrificing a pound of flesh. Blood and guts is the calling card of the series and this version does not disappoint. It is certainly not for the squeamish.

Saw VI delivers what a Saw movie is supposed to. Just by doing that, it places the series among the greatest horror franchises of all time. By the time they reached this point, the Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Child’s Play franchises had become parodies of themselves, comedies built around a string of murders. The Halloween movies were just plain dreadful. And I haven’t even mentioned such dreck as Leprechaun and Police Academy. Wait, what? Police Academy 6: City Under Seige wasn’t a horror flick? Says you.

Anyhoo, each movie in the Saw series is still linked to the one before it, where the movies in those other franchises became stand alone entries that just happen to feature the same villain with the same M.O. It’s still well written, at least for the genre. It still gives us a twist we might not see coming. And believe it, or not, it can still make us cringe at the decisions characters are forced to make in the face of their own mortality as well what happens to them if they make the wrong choice.

The Opposite View: Bob Grimm, Tuscon Weekly

What the Internet Says: 6.2/10 on imdb.com (10/7/10), 42% on rottentomatoes.com, 30/100 on metacritic.com

MY SCORE: 6.5/10