Here's the thing. It's been three films since they killed off Jigsaw, the putative psycho-killer of the Saw series of slasher films. So at this point, they literally are beating a dead horse.

Of course, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) lives on, in flashbacks and recordings and ghostly visions seen by his deranged widow Jill (Betsy Russell). And he lives on in the acolyte characters who've picked up his weird moral crusade to torture, or kill, people who don't properly appreciate life.

In one case in Saw VI, the victim's crime is that he's 52, overweight, has high blood pressure and yet still smokes. Geez, I hope no one saw me eat that burger last week.

And then there's an ordeal a newspaper reporter goes through for "sensationalizing ... and twisting the truth." You ever heard of a thing called a letter to the editor?

Said heirs to Jigsaw's legacy include Jill, police detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) and Amanda (Shawnee Smith), a follower who was also killed zumma-zumma films back, but also shows up in flashbacks and visions.

Who knew there were that many people lining up to be apprentice serial killers?

And what is it in this series about resurrecting dead characters? In a lame twist, another running character who was given up for dead in Saw IV turns up alive in VI, which is all I'll say about that.

I'm not one of those critics who've slammed this series from the beginning. To its credit, the first Saw was more atmospheric than gory, and as late as Saw IV there was some mystery in sussing the identity and motivations of Jigsaw's successor. But now that Hoffman has the hammer, er, blade, there is very little left but the torture, and a clueless police investigation.

The filmmakers do recognize an exploitable moment in current events when they see one. Jigsaw's vengeance in Saw VI is straight from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. It opens with a pair of sub-prime mortgage lenders, trussed up like livestock, and receiving the usual moralistic homily from their voice-modulated captor like Keith Olbermann gone postal ("You recklessly loan people money, knowing they can never pay you back! You are predators!"). They are then given a minute to hack off their own flesh, with the one who hacks off the most being allowed to live.

But Jigsaw's big prey in Saw VI is, of all things, a bigtime HMO actuary named William (Peter Outerbridge) who has got rich finding ways to deny life-saving treatment to sick people.

What, Bernie Madoff was out of reach? Conrad Black should stop complaining about the harsh anti-corporate retribution he thinks HE received.

William's desperate, hour-long, clock-ticking maze-run -- interrupted by repeated torture-filled episodes of choosing who lives and dies from among his employees (fellow health-care criminals all) -- consumes most of the movie. The rest is made up of eye-rolling investigation scenes (with the actual perpetrator Hoffman being consulted every step of the way), and a kind of psycho-turf-war between Hoffman and Jill that dictates the last act. Meanwhile, all the ticking-down clocks remind you of how much of the movie you have yet to endure.

But, hey, next year there'll be a Saw VII. And it'll be in 3-D! Won't that be special?

(This film is rated 18-A)

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