Savage - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Savage



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
It seems that director/writer/film star Siwei Cui has a penchant for making movies about someone being trapped in an isolated area. He was the writer (and a decent part in) of the Chinese film The Island that I reviewed earlier this year, one of the stranger and more bizarre films to come out of the Asian continent in quite a while. It was a movie that I tend to think blends bits of art house flair with Gilligan’s Island and a bit of Lost at the same time. Probably one of THE most surreal movie watching experiences of the last years in my opinion. Savage is much more straight forward with it’s thriller premise, but still has some of the mental gymnastic nuances of The Island and a rather intriguing (if not well worn) premises. The movie itself struggles with some odd video editing from Cui, but is a solid bit of thriller entertainment that certainly is enjoyable to watch if you can keep up with the sudden and abrupt scene changes that are employed throughout the (almost) 2 hour film.

The film starts out with a trio of robbers hijacking an armored car full of gold, only for us to shift quickly to the real heroes of the movie, a pair of cops who are vying over the affections of a local medical doctor who kind of has a thing for both of them. Unfortunately for the two cops, one of them is summarily slaughtered when the duo stumbles upon the robbers, leaving only officer Wang Kanghao alive to live with the guilt of not being there with his partner. A year later most people have forgotten about the great robbery, but Kanghao still carries a bit of a grudge towards the killers, even though he probably won’t see them again. That is until he and his new partner stumble upon a group of poachers in the winter wild, only for these poachers to be the same group who had murdered his partner.

Shooting one, and under fire from another, Officer Kanghao is now involved in a game of cat and mouse, where he stays one step ahead of his pursuers, and leverages the very gold that they stole from the armored car against them as everyone is out to survive in weather that wants to kill them all.

Savage is much more straight forward and traditional than The Island by a LOOOONG shot, and this being Siwei Cui’s first time directing, turned out pretty good. The story is pretty rote and typical of the thriller genre, and there’s not a whole of twists and turns to the plot, but Cui keeps the plot moving along at a brisk pace. The quiet bits of introspection and bits of nature are interspersed with scenes of quite and brutal violence. A move which can suddenly jolt the viewer out of their mild mannered watching and acts as a juxtaposition to the scenic “chase” film aspects of the movie.

The one drawback about Savage is the strange and brutally quick cuts that Siwei Cui infuses throughout the movie. The scene changes can be incredibly swift, and actually change time periods throughout the story as well. The first few scene changes took me by surprise as I wondered why the plot seemed so disjointed, only to realize that they were in different times of the film and were used as flashbacks and fast forwards to push the story along. The first few can be rather jarring and bring the plot to a halt, but once you get used to the leap frogging of the plot, they get more and more cohesive as long as you’re paying attention.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

Shot using Arri Alexa cameras and finished at 2K (according to online sources), Savage is a stunning film on Blu-ray. Using a slightly odd aspect ratio of 2.66:1, it’s scope is extremely wide, and Cui uses that wide scope to his advantage with the gorgeous white scenery. The film is color graded with a rather heavy teal look (leaning heavily towards the green end of that blue/green teal range), with it even affecting the whites of the snow with the slight push. Inside shots that are lit with incandescent lighting tend to be more gold and amber infused, but in both scenarios details levels are jaw dropping. You can see bits of ice and snow littering the facial hair of the villains and heroes alike, and the individual footsteps in the snow are incredibly well nuanced with bits of debris noticeable in the center, as well as creases and curvatures of the heavy parkas. There’s some mild banding in dark shots, but EXTREMELY minimally compared to many other Well Go USA titles I’ve seen.








Audio:

The Mandarin 5.1 DTS-HD MA lossless track is also up to the same standards as the excellent video score is. The haunting score and light and airy surround usage of the barren wilderness is exquisite to listen to. There are whole sections of the movie where all you are hearing is the wind whipping across the trees and man sized grasses, or the crunch of footsteps in the snow. Just like the story, those quick moments of visceral action are violent and brutally loud. Gunshots and car crashes shake the walls with low and guttural bass, while the surrounds kick up with the scrabbling sound of feet on wooden floors, or the whap as a shotgun slug slams into a tree in the rear of the room. Dialog is always crisp and clear, with great localization up in the front of the room, and evenly balanced with both the quiet moments and the extremely aggressive portions of the film. All in all, an excellent sound mix.







Extras:

• Theatrical Trailer
• Well Go USA Trailers

Final Score: ​

Savage is a film that seems strangely at odds with itself for a large portion of the movie. Director Siwei Cui seems to have wanted to make two different films, one about a group of thieves and your typical heist thriller, while the other is more introspective and focusing on a police officer’s PTSD and personal life after dealing with a loss. Both subsections of the movie work on their own, but have a hard time meshing together as a single cohesive piece. Still, despite some janky edits and a narrative that shits forward and back, side to side in time, Savage manages to be a solidly entertaining thriller at its core. Well Go USA hits us with some really nice audio and video scores, but the typical almost nonexistent extras. At the end of the day, worth watching as a fun watch.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Chen Chang, Ni Ni, Fan Liao, Hua Liu, Yicong Zhang, Jue Huang
Directed by: Siwei Cui
Written by: Siwei Cui
Aspect Ratio: 2.65:1 AVC
Audio: Mandarin: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Mandarin DD 2.0
Sugtitles: English
Studio: Well Go USA
Rated: NR
Runtime: 113 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: December 3rd, 2019

Recommendation: Good Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Will check it out once available on amazon prime/netflix. :0