MovieChat Forums > Savior (1998) Discussion > terrible movie (minor spoilers)

terrible movie (minor spoilers)

posted 19 years ago by omahabitch
14 replies | jump to latest

Saw this movie on TV yesterday. At first, i was very interested, because it had Dennis Quaid and Nastassja Kinski in it, but i was really let down.

1. There isn`t really any tension building up until maybe the last 20 minutes of the film

2. The actors are really weak in their roles. Quaid is not credible as an american mercenary who joins the serbian army to fight the croats (!!!), Kinski is even worse.

3. The movie obviously claims to be "realistic", given it`s camera style and the whole way it was shot. But it makes the Serbs seem to be the "good ones" of this war and the Croats are the hammer-murdering, raping, baby-killing bastards. One does not have to know much about this war and its events, to know that this is a highly questionable point of view. I`m not saying that the Serbs are the only responsible side for what happened, but they carry AT LEAST AS MUCH of the burden as the Croats do.

omaha

[–] jm2-1 19 years ago

2. The actors are really weak in their roles. Quaid is not credible as an american mercenary who joins the serbian army to fight the croats (!!!), Kinski is even worse.

No. You are wrong. He goes to fight the Muslims, and it is mostly Serbs and Muslims in the movie until the bus/massacre scene near the end: then it is Croats killing Muslims and Vera, who'd gone off alone to search for a bus and got caught up in the situation.

Guy Rose (Dennis Quaid), Vera and her child had been on their way out of Bosnia for some time and were probably very near the Bosnia/Croatia border when the scene with the Croats killing Muslims took place.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] RiKx_Nu 19 years ago

Oh Dear "saw" the film eh? pity you didnt WATCH it i guess it was too much for you too understand. I suggest to stick to mass-marketed, over produced, special effect driven, spielberg toss which requires no thought. If you calm down on your use of incorrect quotation marks you might have seen that the Serbs are portrayed as quite awful in the film. Also if you had watched it you would know that Dennis Quaids character was a ex foriegn legion soldier turned mercanary who fights WITH the serbs because it gives him the chance to kill muslims who he believes are responsible for the death of his family. The film shows that in the field of conflict no-one is innocent and no-one is "good ones". The comfort I can take from your appraisal is that you are very young and unable to comprehend the complexities the film illustrates.

[–] rumpelstiltskin-1 19 years ago

Not at all. Goran is a rapist, a killer of old grannies and someone who burns and kills Bosnian Muslims in their villages. Dennis Quaid's character shoots a young Bosnian Muslim on a bridge for no reason, Vera's father is a highly unsympathetic character....

[–] icemanyurt 19 years ago

He had cauase to pop him

His buddy in the FFL was killed by a gernade tossed by young Muslim girl who had crossed that bridge...he was told not to let anyone cross...

But of course it is going to haunt him

[–] rumpelstiltskin-1 19 years ago

The young Muslim girl threw the grenade after the scene with Joshua killing the young boy. So, Stellan Skarsgard's character was still alive when Josh killed the boy with the goat crossing the bridge. The Muslim girl went to get revenge against them after that had happened.

[–] combatreview 19 years ago

Both of the previous posters are wrong. Joshua did not have 'cause' to kill that shepherd boy, but he did mitigation - the flashback shows us that he has learned from bitter experience that children can be used as combatants too.

This does NOT mean that the shepherd boy was anything other than a shepherd, it just puts his murder by Joshua into context. Similar stories can be found from many wars including vietnam. If children try to kill you, you soon find you have no choice but to kill them first. That doesn't make this okay, but it does make this particular action more than a simple act of sadistic brutality.

And the scene with the girl throwing the grenade is a flashback - it is shown to us to put the cold-blooded shooting of the boy into context. It is show to us after the boy is killed, but it happened before.

[–] rumpelstiltskin-1 19 years ago

The thing is, the boy was clearly not a threat. He was taking no notice of Josh or his friend. At the beginning of the film, no one can deny that Josh had a pathological hatred for muslims. His son and wife were killed by muslim terrorists and he wanted to get even. An "eye for an eye" as the saying goes.
Remember he said something to his friend when they were in Africa "don't you want to fight in something you believe in?"

Josh clearly believed in getting revenge against muslims. I don't see any reason that the girl should have thrown a grenade (risking her own life) unless they had done something to provoke that behaviour.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] Qaoz 19 years ago

It's called war.

All's fair in love and war.

[–] adi_tufo 18 years ago

"Josh clearly believed in getting revenge against muslims"

That logic does not make sense, he is angry at some extremist Arabic guy, so he goes to kill Bosnians?

That's like Jew being mad at Germans for WWII and then going to kill Etheopians.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] rome12390 19 years ago

what are you tsalking "GOOD GUYS"....didnt Goran Cut off a finer off of that old lady so he can only have her ring....where good did you see there

[–] Mathiasb82 18 years ago

He did not go to war and fight muslims. He went to the foreign legion to escape punishment from what he did in the moske. In the foreign legion they ship soldiers to whereever they are needed. And he ended up in that conflict. I think Savior is one of the best warmovies ever made, it doesnt take any specific sides, showing that both sides of war do terrible thing. Great pictureing of what happens in situations like that.