10 Actors Who Just Gave Their Best Performance Ever

Saw returned to our screens with its X entry last year - a prequel set somewhere between Saw I and Saw II that digs up the bones of the series' main cast and tries to get '20s audiences pumped for a decidedly noughties genre. Defying the series' established MO, John Kramer (Tobin Bell) - the Jigsaw killer himself - goes on a quest for personal vengeance, bringing along his bawling flunky Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) and taking the rooms and traps the franchise is known for to some strange and unusual places.

X may be yet another unnecessary entry in a tired franchise that has done nothing to shift the status quo in years, but Bell doesn't seem to care a jot. Perhaps assuming this would be his last time in the role, Bell gives it his all, defying the typically two-tone approach the series takes to character development and going deep on the conflicted, tender, broken-hearted man behind the saw.

In a film of cartoonish, scenery-chewing performances, Bell is the single reliable talent, somehow managing to make us sympathise deeply with a torture-happy serial killer. It's no mean feat, and is not only the absolute best that the octogenarian actor has ever given us, but perhaps the best we'll ever see again.