SAVIOR

Inspired by true events in war-torn Eastern Europe, SAVIOR is a disturbing story of moral redemption that, regrettably, does not save its audience from tragic and overly brutal scenes of violence.

Dennis Quaid plays Joshua Rose, a foreign diplomat living in Paris who tragically loses both his wife and son in a terrorist bombing in 1987. Embittered and spiritually deadened, Joshua joins the French Foreign Legion and becomes a mercenary fighting on the Serbian side of the war in Bosnia. Channeling the anger and bitterness he has over the death of his family, Joshua participates in inhumane killings and slaughters of both soldiers and civilians.

Joshua finally becomes disgusted, however, after watching his fellow soldier, Gornan, become immensely thrilled when he cuts off an old lady’s finger. When Gornan starts punching a pregnant woman who was raped in the stomach and threatens to shoot her right there, Joshua becomes enraged and shoots Gornan, killing him. As a result of this trauma, the woman, named Vera and played by Natasa Ninkovic, goes into labor. Joshua helps deliver the new baby girl into the world. Vera is still in shock and incapable of taking care of her child, so Joshua wraps the baby in a blanket and proceeds to drive both of them safely to their home.

Arriving at Vera’s home, Joshua is surprised when both Vera and the baby are not welcomed by her father. He tells Vera that she has dishonored the family by having this child and that she should have killed herself. They are thrown out of the house to fend for themselves. Joshua, now driven to take care of Vera and the baby as a way of making up for all the bad that he has done, takes both of them in his jeep and starts a journey to seek safety for them.

A powerful yet disturbing movie, SAVIOR highlights the horrible atrocities and the evil that comes out of war, especially one that involves killing innocent civilians at the discretion of the soldiers. It also portrays the transformation that can occur when a person, who has experienced tragedy, displaces his anger and wants to redeem himself. That’s what happens to Dennis Quaid’s character in SAVIOR.

The movie, however, places too much focus on the violence and not enough on Joshua’s inner turmoil. There are many unnecessarily graphic scenes that are troubling. For example, the graphic scene of the lady’s finger being cut and the bloody slaughter of young children could be lessened or even eliminated, while still getting the point across about the injustices of war in general and the Bosnian conflict in particular. By including these scenes, the director limits his audience.

Even so, the strong pagan and anti-moral content in the movie, including some strong foul language, is mitigated a little bit by the mildly moral worldview the movie takes toward Joshua and Vera’s situations. Quaid and Ninkovic give solid performances in SAVIOR. Use of the old moral code from the Golden Age of Hollywood combined with a stronger biblical worldview would have definitely improved both the moral and entertainment quality of this movie.