Saw III

The "Saw" "trilogy" comes to a rip-cut, planed and sanded ending in "Saw III," a movie that fills in back story and wraps up five hours or so of blood, entrails, bone splinters and albumen.

That's brain fluid, by the way — albumen. You see some, or a makeup wizard's version of it, in "III."

Aside from that, it's more "traps" set by the wily, wheezing puppet-master "Jigsaw" for more not-quite-deserving victims, people metaphorically trapped by hatred, fear or other shortcomings. In the "Saw" movies, conceived by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, it's all about what sins you've committed against society or your own potential and just what you will do to extricate yourself from a horrific situation.

Every manner of torture apparatus imprison folks who are given the chance to hacksaw their feet off, burn their hands with acid or "take a bullet" to pass some "test" that will win their release.

The premise is bogus to anybody with all their albumen intact. The "guilty," from the start, are abused, tortured and injured in the process of encasing them in this or jabbing needles through that. And nothing any of these people has done warrants any of this. All the back-story in the world doesn't excuse a single act that Jigsaw commits.

Here, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), the murderous judge and executioner, is on his last legs. He and his sidekick (Shawnee Smith, in all three films, and bad in all three) seize a doctor (Bahar Soomekh, just dreadful) and her husband (Angus McFadyen, quite good), and put the husband through a murderous series of tests of compassion. He's enraged in his grief for their dead son. He must show growth, as a man, in every step, or his wife dies.

Meanwhile, the wife is treating the terminally ill Jigsaw. Not by choice. She is imprisoned by a collar of shotgun shells and a gadget that will set them off.

We take the father's moral journey, try to watch the screen as horrible dilemmas are faced and gruesome death is meted out and idiotic dialogue is sputtered by actors covered in gallons of fake blood. Bell gets the real zingers.

"Death is a surprise party, unless of course, you're already dead on the inside."

Can I get that on a Hallmark card? Because that's just beautiful.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman has better material and does a flashier job with it on this "Saw." He also directed "Saw II," which was half-hearted, in script and execution — and not the least bit scary. The third movie is closer to the wincing discomfort of the original "Saw."

If only he could lift his boots out of the gore. He, and apparently the audience, are happy wallowing in it. Albumen included.

"Saw III" is rated R for strong grisly violence and gore, sequence of terror and torture, nudity and language. Running time: 107 minutes.