Red Sparrow is a 2018 spy-thriller film directed by Francis Lawrence who worked with Jennifer Lawrence (the star here) on a couple of the Hunger Games movies, but this is a very different beast. Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova (in, it has to be said, a not entirely convincing Russian accent), and Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenarts and Charlotte Rampling star as the film's secondary characters. This one is a pretty big departure from what Lawrence has done in the past, although it has to be said that she's making some pretty bold career choices. I'm not the first one to say that, and for a good reason: it's true. After last year's Mother! it appeared as if she was trying purposefully trying to appear in more "mature" films, and believe me, it doesn't get much more mature than Red Sparrow. The film plays out like one of those schlocky exploitation from the seventies, in that there's sexual violence, sex, violence, torture, and all manner o
Jigsaw is a 2017 horror film directed by Michael and Peter Spierig. It was written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger. The story this time is...well, Jigsaw's back. Or is he? People get murdered in brutal ways, that's for sure. At the start, a man is being chased by the police, and then he's shot before he can detonate a bomb which will seemingly kill five other people, but save his own life. Where do the police come into this? how do they know he's going to set off the bomb? who knows - all that matters is the police need to be there so they can investigate the new Jigsaw killings.
In the interest of fairness, for most people the appeal of the Saw franchise, and torture-porn films in general is not the plot. The plot is basically a way for the film-makers to get a bunch of people into a place in which they can be killed or mutilated in various inventive ways, for lack of a better word. I don't have an inherent problem with that - the point of torture-porn films is that they have to have torture, in the same way that action films need a lot of action. To the film's credit, although the horror sections are nothing new, they are interesting and fun and exactly what somebody who goes to see a Saw film would want. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of detective work in Jigsaw, and that's where it starts to fall apart.
The part of the film which doesn't take place in a Jigsaw trap is basically a whodunnit with red herrings and double-crossings and lots of detective work, and although there's some sharp dialogue, none of it makes any sense. The first Saw film had a lot of that too, but the difference is that the plot in that was logical. Instead of going down that route this time, they should have kept the plot simple and focused on the horror aspects. As I said before, that's exactly what the fans want.
The only other issue I have with this film is that the contraptions Jigsaw is using to kill people seem to be getting increasingly ridiculous and unfeasible. There's one which is powered by a motorbike that's somehow connected to a brake at the bottom of a massive cone-shaped machine with spinning blades. I don't know how it works, and I'm pretty sure the film-makers don't either.
This definitely isn't the worst film in the Saw franchise. While some of the others (Saw 3, I'm looking at you) were incredibly boring also made no sense, Jigsaw has at least won half the battle. If it gets to Halloween and you and your friends, or S/O, or whoever you might be interested in going to the cinema with decide to watch a horror, you could do much worse than Jigsaw - just don't expect something memorable.
Comments
Post a Comment