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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe film stars Chris Rock as Detective Zeke Banks, the most unpopular cop in the department due to his history of turning in dirty colleagues. He\u2019s only managed to keep his job because his father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson) is a former chief. He\u2019s forced by his current chief Garza (Marisol Nichols) into taking on a rookie partner named Schenk (Max Minghella). Zeke is unhappy with the assignment because He Works Best Alone, but at least Schenk is new enough to not know to hate him yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The partners banter a bit before investigating a truly revolting crime scene. This scene made the trailers interesting because it lured me into thinking that this would be a \u201cBad Boys\u201d-like action comedy before going in a very different direction. It speaks to how weird it is to see Chris Rock in a movie like this. But I like it. He brings energy to the role, even in unimportant scenes. Usually the only energy you see from the \u201cSaw\u201d movies is people\u2019s desperation when they\u2019re caught in traps and the clock is ticking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of the franchise\u2019s trademark traps, they\u2019re here, but there\u2019s less emphasis on them than usual due to the focus on the Rock and Jackson performances. In the opening, a guy has to sever his lying tongue or get hit by a train (why make the poor conductor feel responsible for a death like that?). Another person has to sever their itchy trigger fingers or get electrocuted. Another has to sever their spinal cord before they get suffocated by melting wax. Someone gets skinned in what may or may not be a trap. A fan launches broken glass at an individual (that not what \u201cglass blowing\u201d means!). An apparent bloodletting trap turns into something else entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The victims are all cops or ex-cops, meaning that someone in the department is probably the Spiral Killer. Everybody takes turns looking suspicious, including Marcus and Zeke. I figured it out right away from the trailers alone. I will say that no previous Jigsaw collaborator is at work here, unless we find out in a sequel that they were pulling strings from off-screen. The killer(s), once revealed, are surprisingly inept at playing the villain. They overexplain in classic villain fashion but without classic villain passion, and they give themselves way too little time to escape and way too many chances to get caught. That isn\u2019t to say they don\u2019t get lucky, though\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With \u201cSpiral,\u201d I liked Chris Rock\u2019s performance and not much else. I\u2019ve never been a big fan of the \u201cSaw\u201d movies, but I at least understand the appeal of the creative traps, which are underutilized here. I truly believe that \u201cSaw\u201d fans are going to be bored by this movie, save for Rock\u2019s undeniable energy, because the Spiral Killer pales so much in comparison to Jigsaw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSpiral\u201d is rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, pervasive language, some sexual references, and brief drug use. Its running time is 93 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver \u201cSpiral\u201d comes to us \u201cfrom the Book of \u2018Saw,\u2019\u201d meaning that it\u2019s a spinoff of the popular mostly-2000\u2019s horror series. The Jigsaw Killer is referenced a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[289],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48782,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48780\/revisions\/48782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}