Another game?!

When will this all end?

Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks (Chris Rock) is a cop who plays by his own rules and who doesn’t work with no partner because the rest of the precinct thinks he’s a rat. Yes, he is the coppiest cop in all of fictionland. Zeke must solve the case of a Jigsaw copycat killer who wants to play a game with the departments’ corrupt officers. To do so, he must work with his new partner William Schenk (Max Minghella). Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson is wasted playing Zeke’s former police captain father, Marcus.

What can we say about Rock? Well, even in his comedic roles, he’s a funny guy but not that great at acting. He does not pull off an actual dramatic performance. He doesn’t have the necessary charisma to pull off playing someone who’s kind of an a*shole, but not without cause. Of course, part of the problem is how poorly written Zeke and the rest of the movie are written.

The second biggest problem with this film is that it is so predictable. William pulls out a picture of the family. I immediately said, ‘he’s going to die unless he ends up being the killer. (spoiler) William seemingly winds up skinned alive midway through, but with the accompanying flashback obscuring his face. Letting the viewer know there is a 100% chance that he will wind up as the copycat. The killer faking his own death has been a staple of mystery fiction since at least And Then There Were None, but this movie makes it so obvious. (/spoiler)

Across the entire Saw franchise, the games have gone from being plausible to cartoonishly over the top (NSFW) about 50 sequels ago, but that’s particularly noticeable here. Unlike John Kramer (Tobin Bell), an engineer, part of a real estate company, and with a million secret apprentices, this new killer seems to be both a relatively average person and working independently. So, where did they get the money, material, manpower, and know-how to build these ultra elaborate death traps? One of which takes place in an actual police station.

Speaking of apprentices, Zeke knows they’re not dealing with a Jigsaw acolyte but someone unconnected because Jigsaw doesn’t target cops. You’d think director Darren Lynn Bousman would remember that Jigsaw does, in fact, target cops. Since Bousman has previously directed both Saw II with Det. Eric Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg) and Saw IV with Officer Daniel Riggs (Lyriq Bent).

A movie about a serial killer targeting dirty cops with a black lead. Surely that’s going to include some kind of commentary on the institutionalized racism plaguing the police. So I was fully prepared to write how, from a free publicity standpoint, it was kind of unfortunate Spiral didn’t meet its May 15th or May 21st release date because that was right before the George Floyd protests started. Except Spiral doesn’t go there, which is unfortunate because that would have made the movie better, if not necessarily good.

This movie is so bad. The big problem is that outside of a photograph, Bell does not put in any appearances. He is the only reason I watched every single one of those g*****n Saw movies, beyond seeing what all the hoopla was about. Though it has been a while, I feel confident in telling you that while the franchise was never that good to begin with, I wouldn’t even put Spiral in my top five Saw movies.