Make no mistake, SPIRAL is a SAW movie, it’s not a bold new direction for the franchise. Bafflingly someone says at one point “Jigsaw didn’t target cops”, which makes you wonder how closely people have been watching the other films (including the director of 3 of them, Darren Lynn Bousman, who returns for a 4th here). A quite restrained Chris Rock is Detective Zeke Banks, on the trail of a Jigsaw Killer copycat targeting dirty cops with a connection to the upstanding Zeke. The set pieces are still flashily violent, the film moves at a pace and doesn’t waste time, but it’s not new or different or elegant enough in its storytelling to stand out much from the crowd, let alone in its own overcrowded franchise. Even the socio-political punch that is a given with a story about a black cop fighting institutional corruption lacks some much-needed bite, final loaded image aside. SSP