Word: plotting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Left with an absurd amount of plot leeway, “All Saints Day” busies itself engaging in a self-referential elevation of campiness. While a great deal of the humor in the original hinged upon the brothers’ bungled attempts to recreate old action movie scenes, “All Saints Day” makes a conscious attempt to churn out fantastically outlandish fight scenes and hard-boiled, quotable one-liners. Murphy kicks off a killing campaign by cheekily remarking to his brother, “Let’s do some gratuitous violence...
...Boondock Saints’ in any way.” While “All Saints Day” does nothing to mar the original, it does little to distinguish itself from it. Rife with humorous references to the 1999 film, it tends to recycle plot in favor of creating well-choreographed shoot-outs with slick dialogue. Still, Duffy’s greatest fears have not been actualized, as the second round of his Catholicized bloodbath is just as much fun as the first. It just might take a while for everyone else to realize...
...Saw” franchise has chewed through writers, directors, characters, and plot devices with the inhuman precision of one of John Kramer’s grisly traps. The formula is so powerful (read: profitable) that it exists outside any single creative mind; it is clearly a product of a studio, rather than an author. The latest installment shows that while “Saw’s” appetite for mutilation and dismemberment is unlimited, its supply of original material...
...there was any subtlety in the director’s cut, it has been removed. With profit-minded executives wielding the razor, narrative developments have been cut down to terse, perfunctory, and hilariously blunt lines. The implication of every plot twist is quickly and explicitly summarized for the audience’s benefit before the film rushes on to the next bloodbath. When Agent Hoffman, Jigsaw’s protege, [SPOILER OR NO?] goes to the audio lab responsible for decrypting a recording which will ultimately incriminate him, the lab technician delivers the following description of un-scrambling audio over...
...this way, the film gets us from trap A to trap B without creating an attachment to the characters or even the plot. Much like pornography, “Saw” uses laughably transparent devices to bring us what we want with a minimum of effort. Of course, plot is not the only point of resemblance to porn: poorly-airbrushed characters, ignorable dialogue, and extended penetration close-ups abound in this film...