SAVIOR

US, 1998, 104 minutes, Colour.
Dennis Quaid, Nastassja Kinski, Stellan Skarsgard, Natasa Kinkovic.
Directed by Peter Antonjevic.

Joshua Rose is on active duty in Yugoslavia during the 1980s. He is a member of a bomb disposal unit. One day, he leaves his wife and son in a restaurant and they are killed in an explosion. Joshua vents his anger by taking a gun, going to a nearby mosque and opening fire. With his friend and co-worker, Peter, he flees the country and joins the foreign Legion, changing his name to Guy.

In the early 1990s, Guy and Peter have returned to Yugoslavia to fight as mercenaries with the Serb forces in Bosnia. Guy is a skilled sniper. His partner is a local man, Goran. Goran is also a psychopathic killer. They are assigned to take a pregnant woman, Vera, back to her village. She has been raped by Muslim soldiers. Angry because she has been with a Muslim, Goran kicks her violently to make her miscarry. Guy shoots him dead. Guy then helps deliver the baby and takes Vera back to her family.

She is rejected once more, this time by her Orthodox father because of the baby's Muslim parentage. When Goran's body is found, the local chief commands Vera's father to avenge Goran. He pursues Guy and wounds him but his son persuades him to spare Vera.

Vera decides to follow her father home but finds the village destroyed and her family dead. Guy now wants to save Vera and her child and does a deal to obtain a car for them to drive to safety in Split. When they run out of petrol, Vera goes to look for a bus while Guy hides the child in a wrecked boat. Vera is amongst a group of people captured by the Croatians. Guy witnesses her brutal murder. He retrieves the child but decides to leaves it on a jetty in Split. A woman watches him from a parked. Guy confesses to her that he is the father. She persuades him to keep the baby.

By the late 1990s, several movies about the Balkan Wars had been produced, especially in Serbia: Underground and Pretty Village, Pretty Flame. British director, Michael Winterbottom, made Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). Theo Angelopolous made Ulysses' Gaze (1997). Savior is an American production, filmed in Montenegro. It failed to find wide cinema release.

All these movies display an intensity of emotion that was disturbing for audiences who knew of the cruelty of the battles and atrocities only through headlines and television clips. Critics argued whether there was pro-Serbian bias in the movies, or pro-Bosnian or pro-Croatian. Savior's director, Peter Antonjevic, is Serb. However, he does not hesitate to show in the sniper, Goran, the savage face of Serbia.

Savior, like Welcome to Sarajevo, was made principally for western audiences. A westerner (a reporter in Welcome to Sarajevo, a mercenary in Savior) is caught up in the war yet, ultimately, has to make personal choices about loyalties, about saving children, about protecting the future.

Where Savior is particularly hard-hitting (Oliver Stone was a co-producer) is in the opening sequences where Joshua's wife and child are murdered and, even more terribly, where Joshua opens fire in a Mosque. At the end of the movie, Serbs, including Vera, are bludgeoned to death, a scene that does not allow the audience avoid the atrocities.

Joshua/Guy, embittered by savagery towards his family, gives himself over to war and killing. Finally, he is offered the possibility of redemption in his decisions to defend and rescue Vera and the child. Guy saves the child. The child is a saviour for Guy.

1. The Balkan wars of the 1990s? Close to the events?

2. The title? Ironies? The final fact?

3. The initial Paris settings, the city, the apartment, bonds? The Mosque? The transition to Bosnia, the town, the bridge, the checkpoint, the homes and the bombs? Bosnian countryside? Villages, destruction? On the road, refugee camps? The coast and the haven? The musical score?

4. The restaurant explosion and Guy's grief, death of his wife and child? The intensity of his going to the Mosque and shooting people dead? His friendship with Peter, Peter and the shooting? Their leaving France, the foreign Legion? Its effect on his life, his fighting as a mercenary sniper in Bosnia - the shooting of the boy with the goat?

5. Bosnia, the landscapes, Joshua and his changing his name to Guy? Pro- Serb? The bridge, the sniper point? Peter and his death? The girl throwing the grenade?

6. Goran and his brutality, his character, working with Guy? The ceasefire, going with Guy, visiting the homes? The old woman, alive, the dead mother, the baby in the wardrobe? Goran returning, killing the old woman, killing the baby, cutting off the finger to steal the ring? Helicopter and the rubble?

7. The prisoner exchange? Finding Vera, pregnant, the background of rape? Taking her in the car? Goran and his kicking Vera? Guy's shooting him to protect Vera? The birth of the child? Vera and her not wanting any contact with the baby? Arriving at the village? Vera rejected by her father, saved by Guy, the flight in the boat and the car?

8. Vera’s family, their shame? Going to the camp, her still rejecting the child? Goran’s family and the pursuit, Guy being injured? The explanation that Guy had shot Goran to save Vera and the child?

9. The Roundup? Moving to the coast? The kind family who had lost their children in the war, Croat and Serb marriage? The suddenness of Vera's capture, her searching for the bus, and being among the group to be executed? The bludgeoning? Guy almost suffocating the baby to protect it? His journey, the Red Cross, the woman offering him the baby, his decision to abandon the child? His being saved by taking the child with him?