Watch Savage For Free
Savage
An exploration of masculinity and violence. A story of obsession and revenge, as a man tries to come to terms with a brutal, random attack and its consequences.
Release : | 2009 |
Rating : | 6.5 |
Studio : | Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Savage Productions, |
Crew : | Director of Photography, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Darren Healy Nora-Jane Noone John Burke Jer O'Leary Gerard Jordan |
Genre : | Drama Horror Thriller Crime |
Watch Trailer
Cast List
Related Movies
Reviews
Redundant and unnecessary.
I wanted to but couldn't!
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
This should've been Darren Healy's claim to fame; he provides a brilliant performance and a thrilling character transformation as Paul Graynor, a shy photographer who is dragged down an alleyway one night by two men and mugged. They then beat and castrate him for good measure. Paul becomes a recluse, terrified of the world around him. He takes control back; he joins a gym, shaves his head, loses the glasses and takes steroids. He also buys a large hunting knife and carries it around with him. Then he starts to hunt for the men who emasculated him. In essence, Paul turns in to the men who assaulted him, and we are geared up for a shocking, violent climax.With the exception of 'The Commitments' in the early 90's, Irish cinema was a rare beast up until probably the late 1990s and early 2000s, but in all fairness, we have never produced anything worth shouting about. Healy starred in a film called 'Crush Proof' around that time, a film that should've been a lot better than it was, but he nevertheless was superb in that one. He's been a fairly low-key actor over the years and personally I think he would've been perfect for a role in RTE's landmark gangland series 'Love/Hate'.'Savage' is quite a violent film, and one that does stay with you. Director Brendan Muldowney makes good use of the grim Dublin streets in creating a bleak and dangerous atmosphere. The script does a good job building up the tension until it explodes. There's been nothing else quite like it produced on these shores.
After reading some reviews and recommendations here and there, I got curious. The title, poster and plot on their own wouldn't have really drawn me to watch it.First off: it's not really bad and there are some individual scenes that are pretty intense (and even an occasional sort of funny one - with the sheep), as is the acting by Darren Healy. But the script feels like a mess and mostly like a generic series of 'must-happen' events in what has come to be known as the revenge flick, including an all-out bloody ending. For some films that works, for example 'I spit on your grave' (1978!), where form, creativity and energy really come together. 'Savage' looks bleak, and wants to paint a bleak picture of how a civilized man can totally lose himself in 'fear, control, anger and REVENGE'... Well, those 'chapters' didn't help any at all either, did they? But bleak as it tries to look, it is visually pretty uninteresting, and hard as the punchline wants to be, it doesn't punch. Not for me, anyway.That's it. A small 6? A big 5? For Healy's good effort, some proper moments and those poor sheep I will show mercy.
First, I wanna quote FlashCallahan with his brilliant words that really express one of the main points of this movie: "the film carries some heavy morals about getting revenge, it can eat away at you and turn you into the one thing you despise.". This key idea is extremely important for all the mankind. And another key idea I saw is that violence generates violence - not a new one for me, but shown in a very illustrative way which reflects a deadlock principle "eye for eye". In fact, the main character's transformation into "the man, who is able to stand up" is a developmental dead end to a savage, not a human. Indeed, Darren Healy's character had no self-defense skills, probably, had no experience of being attacked or hurted, unable to fight. Anyway, his "compensation" all these missed things transformed him neither to a "real man", nor to human at all. The ability to kill, to revenge, to destroy is not a true attribute for a real man, if we refer it to human being. And revenge is displayed as more powerful thing than love, because even love cannot stop revenge from its destroying a person who chose it. The director of the film mercilessly destroyed the ideas of humanism, having carried them to our society. But in this way he strongly focuses on them, highly paying attention on the impossibility of their existence on the way the main character chose. Of course, the emphasized problem is always actual and very difficult. The difficulty is about what to do with a destroyed and changed life when society gives you 2 options - to follow it and substitute human concepts in which a man is a one who is able to kill and avenge (and degrade within), or to die from such concepts. No, a choice is always exists, but there is a very delicate balance between a right choice and those given options. Although the director told nothing in this film. This movie really impressed me, though I don't like violence on the screen.Especially I admired Darren Healy's play done. It's a harsh and rough film but it can make you think much.
I was fairly pleased with Savage.On the same night I had watched The Descent 2 on DVD which was god awful and was hoping Savage would be a lot better, and it was.The acting is believable and our main character goes from a geeky shyish guy to a psychologically disturbed man who commits a gruesome murder at the end of the film. A beheading none the less!!! The beheading scene was done exceptionally well, so good actually that I think the director had seen real beheadings on the Internet.The film has a dark, troubled mood to it, which I liked.I hope to see more work by this director as I liked Savage.Recommended.