Savior (Blu-ray Review)
Director: Predrag Antonijević
Release Date(s): 1998 (March 26, 2025)
Studio(s): Initial Entertainment Group/Lions Gate Films (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)
Film/Program Grade: A-
Video Grade: A
Audio Grade: A
Extras Grade: A
Savior (Blu-ray)
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
Some war movies are all about action. Others are star vehicles. Still others deal with the brutality and inhumanity that comes with armed conflict. In Savior, a mercenary goes about the business of killing until a discovery alters his perception of what must be retained amid the chaos.
Joshua Rose (Dennis Quaid) is a soldier assigned to the U.S. embassy in Paris. His wife (Nastassja Kinski) and son are murdered in a terrorist attack. At their funeral, he rushes out to seek vengeance, enters a nearby mosque and shoots the men praying there. His friend Peter Dominic (Stellan Skarsgard) rushes to stop him but arrives too late and is forced to shoot in self defense a wounded men who pulls a gun on Rose. To avoid the consequences of their actions, the two friends join the foreign legion and several years later are earning their living as mercenaries fighting for the Bosnian Serbs in the Bosnian War.
Joshua is a sniper. Even when he’s forced to shoot children, he remains undeterred in his mission, emotionless and focused on his job. He witnesses a great deal of brutality, some of it committed by his fellow soldier Goran (Sergej Trifunovic). Joshua saves the life of Serb woman Vera (Natasha Ninkovic), who was raped by a Muslim while in a prison camp and bore a daughter. Joshua is determined to escort mother and child to safety.
Joshua Rose isn’t the typical movie hero. Early in the film, he mows down innocent people in an act of domestic terrorism. He later commits a war crime by doing nothing as others commit atrocities. His humanity has been buried under grief, and his desire to save Vera and her daughter is an attempt at redemption. But his path is strewn with obstacles as he confronts ethnic and religious biases as well as armed enemies.
Savior is a bleak film that, though not especially bloody, doesn’t turn away from the rampant brutality of the war and its participants. We witness events through the eyes of Joshua, a foreigner who doesn’t even speak the language. Many of the scenes are tough to watch, but underscore the senselessness and futility of actions that pass for wartime necessity. Innocent women and children are slaughtered with impunity, and it’s the norm rather than the exception.
Dennis Quaid is convincing as a man whose life is changed in the few seconds it took to kill his family. His Joshua speaks little in the early scenes in Bosnia and sets up his sniper nest with impeccable care. When he lines up a target, we see a close-up of his finger as he determines the best moment to fire or whether to fire at all. Quaid lets us see Joshua’s transformation into a stone-faced killing machine who makes life-or-death decisions as easily as deciding whether to have eggs or pancakes for breakfast. He shows us yet another transformation in Joshua as Vera and her helpless baby move him and he reluctantly decides to deliver them to the Red Cross, a choice that begins to melt away his anger and bitterness. It’s helpful that Quaid is a likable actor. We hope that his character cannot remain in such a dark place.
Vera knows that her society will treat her as disgraced because she was raped. She dreads having to face her father and initially wants nothing to do with her newborn daughter, refusing to feed her or even hold her, leaving the baby’s care to Joshua. As Vera, Natasha Ninkovic projects the look of a completely downtrodden woman who realizes that she will be an outcast. Ninkovic has an expressive face and much of her performance is in her reactions, since Vera and Joshua don’t speak each other’s language. Though weak in body, she’s strong in her determination to survive, and Ninkovic’s performance elicits sympathy for the character at the same time she embodies the collateral damage of war.
Savior was the first American film to deal with the Yugoslav conflict. Directed even-handedly by Serbian Predrag Antonijevic from a screenplay by Robert Orr, it looks at how hatred and prejudice pose as patriotism. The film avoids the tendency of many Hollywood films to work in a romantic angle whenever a man and a woman are the main characters. The feelings that develop between Vera and Joshua show growing respect rather than romantic attraction. For all its grim imagery, Savior is definitely an anti-war picture. It doesn’t take sides, and shows that no one really wins when war buries common decency and value for human life.
Savior was shot by director of photography Ian Wilson on 35 mm film with Panavision cameras and lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Clarity and contrast on the Blu-ray from Imprint Films are excellent. Details, such as the insignias on uniforms, patterns in clothing, parts of the sniper rifle, items in Vera’s parents home, and cafe décor, are nicely delineated. Blood is shown sparingly. When Joshua is setting up his shots, we see what he’s seeing through the telescopic sight on his rifle.
There are two soundtrack options, English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English 2.0 LPCM, with optional subtitles in English SDH. Dialogue is clear and distinct. Sometimes characters speak in Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian. English subtitles are used in only a few instances. Mostly, action tells us what’s happening. Sound effects include grunting, a body being kicked, a huge hammer being used on victims, machine gun fire, truck engines, bodies falling into shallow water, and a baby crying.
Bonus materials on the Region-Free Blu-ray release from Imprint Films include the following:
Audio Commentary by Predrag Antonijevic
A Story Once Told (28:27)
During the War (19:56)
Archival Interview with Dennis Quaid (12:14)
Archival Interview with Stellan Skarsgard (10:40)
Archival Interview with Executive Producer Cindy Cowan (2:33)
Theatrical Trailer (2:27)
Audio Commentary – Director Predrag Antonijevic notes that the opening of the film was changed. Originally, Joshua’s wife dies from a drug overdose and he kills her drug dealer. The director felt this wouldn’t connect plot-wise with the rest of the film, so the terrorist bombing was written instead. The sequence was shot after most of the principal photography was completed, with Montreal standing in for Paris. Antonijevic talks about how the way people die in movies is unrealistic. In Savior, deaths occur realistically, even though not a lot of blood is shown. He points out that the “newborn baby” in the film is too big. The raped girl, Vera, fears going home and facing her father. The family, though sympathetic to her plight, will nonetheless follow the lead of the father. Vera’s attitude toward her baby changes the longer she’s with it. In a scene of Joshua trying to corral a goat to get milk for the baby, steadicam was used to follow Quaid, since the actor’s movements depended on where the goats went. Vera’s transformation in her attitude toward her baby dramatically alters Joshua’s attitude, humanizing him. Antonijevic speaks about the complexities of filming the sequence of a mass slaughter near a river. The water was freezing and the actors were all experienced divers wearing wet suits under their clothes. The director puts the viewer in the position of the observer unable to help. There aren’t many close-ups in the scene. As Antonijevic notes, a director must make decisions, and he believes that his choices in Savior are born out by the final film.
A Story Once Told – Writer Robert Orr, in this new interview, says that he based his screenplay on a story he heard while doing photo journalism in Bosnia in 1993. He would sell the photos to news services. He moved on to do aid work with refugees. At a hotel, there were reporters, aid workers, smugglers, and mercenaries who preferred the term “professional soldiers.” A sniper explained how he worked and set up his nest, and said he was willing to shoot kids if he felt they were the enemy, since kids had lobbed hand grenades. About revising and polishing, Orr says, “At some point the film is done and you have to give it to the audience.”
During the War – In this new interview, actor Sergej Trifunovic, who plays Goran, notes that he was 23 when Savior filming began. It was his third film. He was born in Bosnia and had heard awful stories about what his neighbors did during the war. He studied acting together with Natasha Ninkovic, who plays Vera. “I was chasing frustrations of us being bad guys.” Trifunovic would go on to appear as the bad guy in subsequent films, feeling that the bad guy is usually more interesting than the good guy.
Archival Interview with Dennis Quaid – Quaid was affected by the script. Though it takes place specifically in Bosnia, the film has a universal anti-war theme. The war was confusing in terms of who was fighting whom. Quaid didn’t want to make a political statement, and knew he would “take heat from all sides.” He says that filming was done mostly in Montenegro.
Archival Interview with Stellan Skarsgard – Skarsgard says that Savior is a melodrama “in a nice way.” The violence is realistic and brutal, but he feels that its intensity won’t deter people from seeing the film. In his opinion, the savior of the title is the baby.
Archival Interview with Executive Producer Cindy Cowan – Cowan gives credit to Dennis Quaid, who put his whole heart and soul into the project. She believes Joshua is the savior because the film is about finding a rebirth in himself and finding his way back to humanity. Quaid did some re-writing of his role to add dimension to his character.
Savior is broad in its indictment of war’s excesses. Because of its unfiltered view of war, some might find the film hard to watch. There’s an ongoing mood of sorrow and resignation. No one in war escapes its grip. Director Antonijevic portrays a realistic relationship between Joshua and Vera, steering clear of contriving a romantic relationship. This is a hard, relentless look at war. Death can come unexpectedly and in frighteningly barbaric ways. Ultimately, the film suggests that where there’s humanity, there’s hope.
– Dennis Seuling
