Savage: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Ent

Sam Kelly's confrontational gangs-led story packs a powerful punch in places.

Opening with an unflinching act of brutality, Savage wears its gang patch on its sleeve.

Porirua-based director Sam Kelly's made no secret of the fact that Savage is supposed to be an honest and open look at the grim reality of life within a gang.

Zig-zagging across 30 years of Ryan's Danny, the film chooses three key timelines to dwell on, formative periods of Danny's life that ultimately lead him to a crossroads and a crisis.

But without wishing to sound trite, and perhaps it's more a reflection on society itself, the three key periods all cover very familiar ground to anyone who has an inkling of what violence begets further violence in life. That's not to doubt the film's authenticity though, more that its journey is not perhaps its strongest one.

It begins in 1965, where the child Danny is being brought up in a violent household. It moves to 1972 where the older Danny finds himself part of a new gang, The Savages, and on a collision course with family who are part of rival gangs. And it ends with Danny as the head enforcer of the Savages and who's questioning his role in the cycle of violence.

Central to Savage is the brooding presence of former Home and Away star Jake Ryan. With tattoos covering his face and with a brooding, glowering approach to life, Ryan imbues Danny with some of the inner turmoil he needs to try and sell the idea that enough is enough.

Key to that narrative arc is John Tui's Moses, and his loyalty to the one person who's stood with him all throughout his life - despite the fact that person may be the bad apple Danny needs to step away from.

With a grim dour palette and a sense of foreboding in the atmosphere, Savage is successfull in capturing the mood and tone of calustrophobia in gang life, and the feeling that Danny's close to heading too far down a path that will claim him forever.

But where Kelly falters with parts of Savage is in the zipping between timelines. Even though some of the storyline is handled with restraint and subtlety, the lack of time in each period and the briefest of characterisations means the story fails to reach the emotional resonance and power that it's pushing for.

Equally, while Kelly hints at the fascinating power dynamics between men and women in the gang world (especially with two parallel relationships stretched out across ages), he never quite follows it up, preferring to leave it dangling and frustrating the audience immensely.

All in all, Savage has brooding intensity and shocking violence when it's needed, but it lacks the emotional heft it needs to fully sell its denouement. Kelly's to be commended for trying something different with a story, but the all-too-familiar edges of the narrative journey and jumping around timelines are what hinders Savage from being the powerful film it aspires to.

Win a double pass to see Monster Hunter at the cinemas

To celebrate the release of Monster Hunter in cinemas January 1, 2021, you can win a double pass thanks to Sony Pictures.

About Monster Hunter

Behind our world, there is another: a world of dangerous and powerful monsters that rule their domain with deadly ferocity. 

When Lt. Artemis (Milla Jovovich) and her elite unit are transported through a portal from our world to a new world, they are in for the shock of their lives. In her desperate attempt to get home, the brave lieutenant encounters a mysterious hunter (Tony Jaa), whose unique skills have allowed him to survive in this hostile land. 

Faced with relentless and terrifying attacks from the monsters, the warriors’ team up to fight back and find a way home.

Based on the global video game series phenomenon MONSTER HUNTER.

 

In Cinemas January 1

Rated M Violence

 

The Croods: A New Age: Film Review

Vocal cast: Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Peter Dinklage

Director: Joel Crawford

Seven years after its first outing, the stone age family returns in a sequel that's all about the zany, and the gorgeous visuals than a massively strong story.

With Eep and Guy (Stone and Reynolds) still going strong, the prehistoric Croods are continuing to search for a safer home, where something is not always waiting to kill them. But when they discover a walled paradise run by the Betterman family (Mann and Dinklage), who are a couple of steps ahead of them on the evolution scale, it becomes a battle between neighbours...

The parenting parable that is The Croods: A New Age is good strong family film that may lack some of the originality of the first film but which delivers a frenetic and fun 90 minutes at the movies.

It helps that the animation is gorgeously presented, from wondrously coloured vistas to bright hues writ large upon the screen. The whole film sings with vibrancy and while it doesn't reinvent the stone age wheel, its zaniness does occasionally come with a price.

Lessons are espoused with ease and understanding, but in the final third of the film, there's a slight lull, before the script throws one last wacky turn into proceedings. There are times when it feels like there's a lot going on on the screen, but the all-ages fun element papers over some of the cracks of the narrative.

The world-widening of The Croods: A New Age delivers more options for spinoffs of the Stone Age, and in truth, that's no bad thing. Sure, there's a level of emotion missing from this prehistoric proffering, but this is full-on family fun that more than delivers a few life lessons in among the full-on animated antics.

Tenet: Blu Ray Review

Christopher Nolan's high-concept action-filled Tenet is a blockbuster to see on the big screen.

That's not an exhortation given worries over Covid-19, social distancing and movie releases - more that the film's been primarily made for the big screen experience, and certainly for the IMAX screen with extended action sequences filling every inch of what is on offer.

Nolan's been sparse with details of the plot, but Washington plays an unnamed CIA agent who is called upon to stop a Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (played with devilishly dead eyes by Kenneth Branagh) from ending the world. 

So far, so run-of-the-mill spy thriller.

But Nolan then peppers the script with talk of entropy, backwards-moving bullets and time-shifting scenes and further muddies the water with a never-ending series of set pieces that each try to outdo each other with visuals and action.

The thing is with Tenet is that it's muddled in exposition serving as a bridge in between each action sequence.

Early on, one character says to John David Washington's The Protagonist "Don't try and understand it."

To be frank, it's a missive from Nolan that could also apply to the audience as the movie spools out.

On an emotional level, Tenet is less interested in providing something to grab onto. Whereas Elizabeth Debicki's gangster moll Kat appears to exist purely to service an abused wife storyline, there are hints of attraction between The Protagonist and her, but they exist only in passing.

More effective is the relationship between the Protagonist and Robert Pattinson's initially mysterious Neil. Pattinson delights in delivering one of the strongest performances he's mustered in a while, slipping into the intrigue and action with ease. Washington and he gel well, whereas solo, Washington's Protagonist is left to spout reams of exposition and supposition of what lies ahead. It's in the verbiage that Tenet gains its pomposity.

But at the end of the day, Tenet is all about the action.

Nolan delivers overly choreographed sequences of utter jaw-dropping consequence that are heavily scored by a bombastic and edge-of-the-seat score. An opening sequence inside a concert hall sets the tense atmosphere in motion, and the film very rarely lets up from then on.

It's here that Tenet more than delivers, shifting its pieces around the cinematic table with masterful ease - it's easy to understand why Nolan refused to compromise on his delivery of Tenet into the multiplex and it's easy to let the action wash over you.

There are hints at the end of a potential sequel, but it's hard to see how Nolan could top himself in terms of visual thrills and action sequences.

There's no doubt Tenet is a spectacle, and an at times extremely entertaining one. Just don't scratch below the surface, because emotionally Tenet is lacking. And while that may not be a key factor for those seeking out blockbuster entertainment, for all of its top notch bells and whistles, it does have you leaving the cinema feeling a touch confused and wondering if that was it.

Unhinged: Blu Ray Review

Unhinged is peak 2020, a grubby would-be B movie of a sustained campaign of terror against a woman.

A heavy set Russell Crowe is The Man, a man so far over the edge he's committed double murder and arson before the five minute mark of the film's even hit. Caren Pistorius is Rachel, a woman on the precipice, after waking up late, a messy divorce and a school run all collide.

When Rachel repeatedly beeps her horn at The Man at a junction, her day gets immeasurably worse when he takes affront, and starts pursuing her and her loved ones in a vendetta of road-rage induced revenge.

Unhinged really is the kind of low rent film that would have made it straight to DVD back in the 80s.

Shorn of any real background other than cursory exposition from the cops, Crowe needs do nothing more than look menacing and threatening throughout. And to be fair, when he fixes the screen with a dead-eyed stare, the threat levels reach a crescendo.

But Unhinged requires nothing more of any of its actors.

Certainly the script, loaded as it is with coincidence and nothing more, treats all those involved at the dumbest level possible, with Rachel's character behaving improbably and The Man's escalating rage attracting no attention anywhere else other than inside Rachel's world.

Perhaps that's the most frightening thing about Unhinged - that it gives oxygen to such brutal treatment of a woman and the women in its film. Beaten, stabbed, terrorised - the majority of the victims are female, and the camera appears to relish the horrors visited down on them.

Coupled with clumsy dialogue, and the buzzwording of things like "Fortnite scenario" that are thrown in purely to appeal to the kidz, Unhinged makes no case for subtlety or smarts. Repeated shots of objects show they will become important in just a few frames' time and leave no room for doubt within the script.

But Unhinged's worst crime is how it uses its victim. Even in the final frames, she's robbed of any power or sense of victory in the story, and it's shocking to say the least. The loss of agency and the fact she will forever be a victim is a morally reprehensible message, no matter how dumb the rest of the film is.

Ultimately, Unhinged is a film that deserves to be forgotten - the predictable formulaic action lacks any real redeeming points, and its long term message is enough to leave you needing a shower after you've experienced it.

The Dry: Film Review

Cast: Eric Bana, Genevieve O'Reilly, Keir O'Donnell

Director: Robert Connolly

The sense of oppressive heat is all over Robert Connolly's big screen adaptation of the number one best selling Australian book by Jane Harper.

From the opening shots of a gunshot-blasted body and blood-splattered walls with baby howling in the background to cracked ground that hasn't seen rain for over 350 days, Connolly's The Dry is a gripping thriller that builds on its sense of mystery as it progresses.

When Eric Bana's Aaron Falk returns to his hometown of Kiewarra after the apparent murder suicide of friend Luke Hadler and his family, he finds old wounds reopened after he's asked to look into the case by family. Shocked into returning by a note that says he lied and Luke lied, Falk rediscovers a mystery and secret from his past that he'd thought was long dormant.

There's an appealing grittiness to Connolly's adaptation of the book, even if the final moments see fit to drop a large amount of exposition to answer the mysteries posed throughout.

Essentially an examination of small-town prejudice and the pent-up rage of an angry community tarred by its past, Connolly keeps the helm of the film intimate yet just about wide enough to give a feeling that anyone could have done the crime then, and anyone could have done it now.

In amongst all this is a smoothly suave and calm Bana who plays Falk as a cool and collected character, who's clearly haunted by the past, and troubled by the present. There's little to no showy moments in the softly spoken turn that ensures you're along for the journey as much as Aaron is.  Bana is as good a guide as you'd need for the mystery and while the end challenges credulity due to its excessive info dump after a slow burn, he does more than enough to propel you along.

While there are one too many flashbacks that prove to be better for a book narrative than a big screen one, the diversions just about manage to serve the heightening of the tension and the growth of the mystery, thanks to a younger cast and the palpable sense of a bond from youth.

Ultimately, The Dry's drama and its central mystery are more than enough to keep you engaged over its 2 hour run time - but thanks to a more than affable Bana, who's rarely been better in the steely intensity stakes, this dry is likely to leave you thirsting for more.

Wonder Woman 84: Film Review

Cast: Gal Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Natasha Rothwell
Director: Patty Jenkins

Be careful what you wish for seems like both a good maxim for this film - and also ironically about it too.

After what seems an eternity thanks to the cinematic ravaging by Covid-19 to the release schedule, Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman 84 finally arrives on the big screen.

And it's a wonderfully uncynical piece that's clearly more about uplifting spirits than providing something deep and aimed at moving the DC world forward.

In 1984, Gal Gadot's Diana Prince is working at the Smithsonian Museum, but still stuck in the past pining for the love of her life Steve Trevor. Into her world comes the klutzy Barbara Minerva (Wiig, who seriously impresses with the mix of drama and comedy before the usual superhero blur sets in) and also Pedro Pascal's apparent televangelist Maxwell Lord who promises that what you want can come true if you believe.

But as with everything, it all comes at a price...

Wonder Woman 84 opens with a sequence of wonder as a young Amazonian Diana takes on a challenge, and ends up with a scene that feels like Love Actually crossed onto its set and was responsible for a reshoot to add something in for the festive season.

In between all of this is a mixed pot of both good, and bad. 

From Patty Jenkins' unfussy action sequences that unfold with ease and clarity (bar one final showdown) to a heart that beats loudly in scenes with Pine and Gadot that ripple with chemistry (especially in a scene with a plane in fireworks), there's much that will keep the casual DC fan happy. From the wonder and joy of Pine's comedy chops as he wonders at his out-of-time second life, to Barbara Minerva's gradual opening up, the film has its sense of purpose and mission statement high on its own agenda.

And yet, it also falters into an unusual mix of a film that's not quite sure it has what it takes to break out from the mold of the genre. From Pedro Pascal's hamminess as the ghoul of greed who really has nothing much to do to the 150 minutes oddly feeling like it's padded out via way of a MacGuffin that's barely anything, there's a distinct feeling of indifference that settles into the second act of the movie that's hard to shake. Central to some of that is Gadot, who never clearly seems to deliver lines, and exists mainly to assume the mantle of a model shot in slow mo for various action moments.

In among the kitsch opening, and the 80s nostalgia, it's easy to see why Wonder Woman 84 would have been a surefire thing - there's a comfort to the film's central messages and it would take a hard heart to not give in to the feelings of loss early on, the feeling of wonder in the opening scenes and the take on female friendship.

But this throwback film doesn't quite hit all the right beats, and Wonder Woman 84 is frankly, less of a wonder this time around, more a feeling of the formulaic and rote. It has moments of joy, but the pleasures feel more fleeting and the earnest heart which made so much of the 2017 film and its story arc beat with a vibrant life is noticeably missing.