Savage

(1996) Savage SCIENCE-FICTION ACTION THRILLER.

Produced, co-written and directed by Avi Nesher that has Al (Olivier Gruner) his family of a wife and son executed and killed. He then ends up in the mental asylum when his mind begins to trigger after he hears the Amazing Grace song sung from a TV outside in the corridor, when the support worker was having it on! And for some strange reason he was unable to change the channel, and as a result of hearing that song, gave him the motivation to escape out to the desert since it was the last song he had heard from his wife before she was murdered. And while at the desert, he then stumbles onto a cave where after a couple of days staying in there gave him some super human abilities with an image of his wife inspiring him to seek retribution who even provide the persons face to whom is responsible. And he is not the same person as he used to be as he is lust for vengeance. Once he is captured by policemen, it is during then he ignites a little chemistry with a female police woman, Nicky Carter (Jennifer Grant), and then once he gets locked away he then manages to escape again. All of this was happening while a CEO tech man, Reese Burroughs (Kario Salem) and his three dangerous associates of Marie Beloc (Kristin Minter) who is tech savoy herself and two heavy weight goons of Edgar or Eddie Wallace (Sam McMurray) and Allan Egar Poe (Herschel Sparber) as with the help from much of the police are able to monitor some of his routines. At the same time nicknaming him as "Savage" hence the title, revealing the reason why his family had been executed was because Reese Burroughs wanted to own his property ranch, and refused to sell it to him to uncover an old relic that was on his property.

Watchable mess and made during the time when so much CGI had not been used so much.

This movie isn't as terrible as people make it out to be and the story does make "sense" if you have a reasonable attention span and pay attention. It scores points with me because it isn't immediately clear who the bad guy is and what exactly is going on, but it does manage to unravel at a decent enough pace and tells a story, such as it is. The biggest goof for me is that they are using Cro-Magnon man as a point of reference and part of the movie takes place in Cro-Magnon caves even though the story clearly takes place in North America, a continent that never had ANY prehistoric peoples that I know of and certainly not Cro-Magnon people. They couldn't have used the Aztecs instead? As I type, there are elites who actually think they can upload their personalities into some sort of digital format and there is already a good chunk of the population obsessed with a moronic device their carry around in their pockets, not unsimilar to the virtual reality devices shown in the movie, so these guys weren't completely out there by any means, although I'm sure it was unintentional.

This movie was very ambitious and cool for its non-multimillion dollar budget! The special effects are incredible and the production design incredibly powerful, a strong visual vision from Director, Nesher. Plus, some great performances from actors you should recognize - the bad guy is great, Jennifer Grant obviously got her dad's charm (as in, Cary...) and Kristin Minter from ER is quite the sex pot! A great stay home and rent movie... fun, fast, fantasy flick!

When I watched the film I wondered, how the plot could reveal the reason behind the first massacre, since all the events were based on that. I wondered till the end. And beyond. I still wonder. Maybe part II contains something which could give this plot some sense... I hardly can imagine, but who knows... If you look for visuality without any logic or reason, don't miss this film. Your brains won't overheat of thinking. If you need a plot, avoid like plague. It doesn't have any.

Poorly acted, poorly written, poorly filmed, poorly costumed. Other than that this movie is just a rip off of the Terminator theme. It is for that reason I give it only one star.