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Savior (1997)

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Two soldiers enter a bomb-shattered house. There are bodies on the floor. A baby has been hidden in the closet; the child's grandmother lies petrified on the bed. The soldiers - a Serb and a foreign mercenary - chop off the old woman's finger for sport. We are in Bosnia, 1993. The Serb's sister is returned to him in a prisoner swap. She is pregnant after being raped by her Muslim captors. Shamed and dishonoured, the man beats the baby out of her. Before he can finish the job, he is shot dead by the mercenary, who undertakes to transport the suicidal mother and newborn infant to safety. This is a relentlessly grim and harrowing movie. It's said that military recruitment tends to rise after even the best anti-war films. Only a psychopath would volunteer for the hell Quaid goes through here. This Oliver Stone production squares up to the war in Yugoslavia and never looks for the Hollywood cop-out, save, perhaps, for the first five minutes, a redundant, perfunctory prologue which attempts to explain Quaid's 'motivation', and dispatches with Kinski before the credits have rolled. It's unnecessary, because Quaid's dead eyes tell you all you need to know - this is a brave, concentrated, resolutely unsympathetic performance unlike anything he's done before. The politics are even-handed, the violence brutal and unflinching. It's hard to recommend a movie that resembles nothing so much as a good kick in the head, but Serbian director Antonijevic gives it a raw, ugly force that feels not only authentic, but legitimate.

Author: TCh

Time Out Film Guide

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