Savage

I went to this movie premiere back in the day. I am a fan of revenge movies and I recall they were comparing Savage to an Irish Taxi Driver.

Man, was I disappointed.

This movie is nothing but the trip of a selfish and deranged man to his final consummation. Savage lacks what good revenge movies make them what they are: a certain logic behind the avenger actions, some sense of justice and the ability of the vengeful character to put his/her life at extreme risk without losing his/her mind in the process.

Savage is the story of a man traumatised by an attack and how he loses it when trying to get revenge on his attackers... on anybody! This movie presents us with a character without true focus, a person who anybody with a passion for justice is unable to respect. A spoiled child with a tantrum.

And let's not forget the humour put into the movie. A drama, really? The goofy stuff here and there just does it for the final touch of mimicking good cinematography.

This is to Taxi Driver what a schizophrenic is to logical thinking.

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.

SAVAGE is a low budget, murky, and rather depressing psychological thriller from Ireland. It's about an ordinary young guy who is mugged and scarred by a gang of street thugs, and who subsequently undergoes a violent transformation into a petty criminal himself. The idea for the film's story isn't a bad one, but unfortunately this is a movie that suffers from the usual flaws of independent cinema.

The script is never as hot as it thinks it is and all of the characters are resolutely unappealing. SAVAGE tries to be a powerful piece of movie-making but for most of the running time it just sort of passes you by. I didn't care much for the main character although his physical transformation is a good one. The whole midsection of the film just seems to tread water although it does pick up for a hair-raising climax which is very good indeed; a pity that the rest of the movie doesn't follow suit.

Years ago I had a chance to see one of the director's previous works, the short film "The ten steps". That was great, brilliant idea, scary atmosphere. Director Brendan Muldowney now completed his first feature film, Savage, just hitting cinemas. As its title refers, Savage is shocking, brutal, and disturbing. It shows Dublin's inner part when anti-social behavior is a part of every-day life, especially nighttime. Our hero, Paul (Darren Healy) doesn't care too much about it – actually, he makes a living of it by being a photographer -until he gets brutally attacked and that changes his life forever. A classic revenge tale, and as it is, there's no happy ending. We can see Paul changing, turning from quiet, shy guy into a real psycho. He tries hard to go on with his life – medicines, self-defense classes, gym, but even love can't turn him back from the way he entered and when he get closer and closer to his destiny. Main actor Darren Healy delivers his role brilliantly – however, as soon as he cuts his hair and puts his glasses away, he instantly turns into a bad-face thug, whom you wouldn't mess with. By changing his appearance, the illusion of the shy guy completely disappears. Main actress Nora-Jane No one is natural and beautiful. But even her care and love can't prevent the upcoming tragedy. Savage is not less that any other quality thriller nowadays. Well worth watching.

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.