![]() ![]() Spiral delivers when it comes to gore, if that’s your thing, and appropriately dour aesthetics - but not much else. But the screenplay never satisfyingly digs into those potential tensions, instead relying on tired father/son-conflict clichés: Zeke worries he’ll embarrass Marcus, Marcus doesn’t see Zeke as reliable, and we’ve all been here before. On paper, at least, the two characters’ backstories - Marcus helmed the force during the height of its corruption - are ideal fodder for a textured rendering of a fraught familial bond though it’s clear Zeke has more integrity than his dad, he’s also desperate for approval. With these two formidable actors front and center, the father-son relationship seems rich in dramatic possibility. His trademark tests against the victims become increasingly convoluted and terrifying (choose your fingers or your life, your skin or your life, your spinal cord or… you get the picture), leading Banks to eventually ask his dad, Marcus Banks, former head of the Metro Police (played by Samuel L. Banks and Schenk work tirelessly to track down the copycat, but unfortunately for them, Jigsaw Lite is always one step ahead of the game. Here, Spiral becomes a full-fledged procedural, sprinkled with horror elements. The creepy message prompts Garza to escalate the case and put the entire team to work - much to the chagrin of Banks, who understandably doesn’t trust any of his colleagues. How? By systematically killing the corrupt cops - the ones who carelessly murdered civilians, tampered with evidence and lied under oath. ![]() Banks reluctantly heads to the tracks, where he realizes that the dead man is, in fact, his closest, and perhaps only, friend on the force.īack at the precinct, a Jigsaw copycat delivers a message: “I am here to help reform the metro police,” he says. (This scene, in which it’s revealed that everyone hates Banks because he turned in a corrupt cop, feels rushed, with both Garza and Rock delivering their lines at a distracting, incongruous speed - too slow to feel like natural, propulsive cross-talk, too fast to register as seriously dramatic.) To keep Banks in line, Garza partners him with Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella), an endearing rookie, and tasks the pair with investigating the train crime scene. The raid goes terribly wrong, leading to a tense confrontation between Banks and the head of his force, Capt. Oram, whom many will know as the cinematographer behind Drake’s music videos, deftly melds the grimness of horror with the energy of a dark, moody rap video. This sequence does more to foreground the visual language of the film, expertly overseen by DP Jordan Oram, than add anything substantive to the plot. Meanwhile, Detective Zeke Banks (Rock) is leading an undercover - and, we later learn, unsanctioned - drug raid. ![]() When the screams stopped, I looked up and saw a single, haunting shot of a purple-pink tongue. I wish I could give a detailed account of how Bozwick dies or dissect the realistic nature of the tongue-torture device, but as a famously squeamish person I covered my eyes. A voice from a recorded message offers him an ultimatum familiar to fans: Bozwick can rip his tongue out and live or get hit by an incoming train and die. ![]() When he wakes up, Bozwick finds himself in a subway tunnel, suspended in midair with his tongue in what I can only describe as a strange, ghastly torture device. There, Bozwick is attacked by a mysterious figure in a pig mask. At a parade, off-duty Detective Marv Bozwick (Daniel Petronijevic) chases a thief into a sewer pipe. Spiral takes place in a universe haunted by the legacy of Jigsaw (aka John Kramer, the sadistic antagonist whose obsession with testing people’s will to live drives the series) and begins on the fourth of July in an unnamed city that feels eerily like New York. That conversation eventually culminated in Rock and Bousman, who directed three previous Saw films ( II, III and IV), teaming up to create a legitimately frightening, if unevenly paced, detective thriller. This latest macabre installment sprang from the mind of Rock, who told Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate, how much he loved Saw and wanted to star in a new iteration. Adam Sandler, Jon Stewart, Amy Schumer, Chris Rock to Take Part in Night of Too Many Stars Benefit ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |