Stunning, Graphic ‘Savior’ Unleashes Brutality in Bosnia

Dennis Quaid has the title role in “Savior” as a mercenary who finds redemption in the hell of rural Bosnia. He also saves the film in that he makes bearable the otherwise unbearable, with a portrayal that ranks among the year’s finest, revealing a resonant new maturity as an actor.

Inspired in part by an actual incident, “Savior” was written by Robert Orr, who spent 1993 through 1995 in Bosnia as a photographer’s assistant and relief worker and was directed by Serbian emigre Predag Antonijevic and filmed in the Republic of Montenegro.

The film opens in Paris, 1987. Quaid’s Guy is sitting in a cafe with his wife (Nastassja Kinski) and small son, whom he is promising to take to the movies. His wife is expressing concern that he’s broken so many promises to the child when Guy’s friend and colleague Dominic (Stellan Skarsgaard) appears and says that there’s an emergency, and that they must go immediately to see the ambassador.

No sooner do the men step outside and cross the street than the restaurant is bombed, killing both Guy’s wife and son. Assuming that it is the work of “fundamentalists,” apparently meaning Muslim terrorists, Guy calmly leaves the meeting with the ambassador and heads for a nearby mosque, killing a number of people at prayer. Sensing what Guy might do, Dominic follows and shoots down a wounded survivor about to shoot Guy. The next thing we know both men have signed up for the foreign legion.

“Savior” has therefore at the start announced that it’s going to be a blood bath and that at times it’s going to be hard to follow, which is often the case with a foreign director working in English for the first time. Production notes tell us helpfully that Guy and Dominic are professional mercenaries, but it is unclear in whose employ they are at the beginning of the film or what nation that ambassador is representing. We assume that the foreign legion they join is the French Foreign Legion, but when the film flash-forwards to 1993, and we find them in the service of the Serbs in Bosnia we’re left to assume they are no longer with the foreign legion.

Once past this needlessly vague opening, “Savior” settles into a stunning assertion of humanism in the face of unspeakable mounting horror. Still numb from the killing of his wife and child and the massacre that it triggered in him, Guy is initially fairly indifferent to the Serbs’ and Croats’ savage treatment of each other. But he is finally snapped out of his almost catatonic state when a Serbian soldier, with whom he is partnered, starts kicking a pregnant woman, Vera (Natasa Ninkovic, a lovely and impressive newcomer), in the stomach, causing her to deliver prematurely a remarkably healthy baby, given the circumstances. Vera is from the soldier’s Bosnian village, and is returning home in disgrace, having become pregnant by a Muslim.

When Guy shoots the soldier, “Savior” soon takes on the form of suspense thriller with Guy, Vera and the baby she initially rejects striving to make it to the relative safety of Split, where Guy hopes to get mother and child out of the country. Within this form “Savior” reveals a society that has sunk to the bottom-rung level of people killing each other in the most brutal manner possible, fueled by an all-consuming hatred of those different in ethnicity and religion.

The point “Savior” is making--one that surely will provoke disagreement--is that the situation in the former Yugoslavia has gone beyond any meaningful assigning of blame, and that people have been reduced to the level of wild animals striving to survive.

This starkest of backgrounds--and “Savior” has to be one of the most brutal, serious movies ever made--sets off Guy’s regaining his humanity, his instinctive replacement of the wife and son he lost with Vera and her baby. Within himself Guy discovers remarkable reserves of courage, resourcefulness and a renewed capacity for love.

This regeneration, persuasively expressed by Quaid, unfolds amid too much incessant danger to become sentimental until the film’s final minutes. Murky at the start, needlessly softened at the finish, “Savior” is nonetheless an important and timely achievement.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong violence, including brutal war atrocities, and for language. Times guidelines: As one of the most brutal, serious war films ever made, it is altogether unsuitable for children.

‘Savior’

Dennis Quaid: Guy

Natasa Ninkovic: Vera

Stellan Skarsgaard: Dominic

Nastassja Kinski: Maria

A Lions Gate Films presentation of an Oliver Stone production. Director Peter Antonijevic. Producers Oliver Stone, Janet Yang. Executive producer Cindy Cowan. Cinematographer Ian Wilson. Editors Gabriella Cristiani, Ian Crafford. Music David Robbins. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

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