Savage

There have been some very good gang based movies that have come out of New Zealand over the years . Romper Stomper and Once were warriors are two that spring to mind but is Savage good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as those movies ?

Absolutely.

Inspired by the true stories of New Zealand's street gangs across 30 years, this movie follows danny at three defining moments in his life as he grows from a boy into the violent enforcer of a gang.

I really liked this film . It shows how one wrong turn ( or accident) in childhood can change an entire life and affect you and others for decades .

The performance are brilliant . Jake Ryan is superb and as far as I'm aware it's the first film I've seen him in anything . The young lad who plays Danny as a kid is great too.

It's violent but not gratuitous. You seen what is necessary to the story and no more and you have to applaud director Sam Kelly for not going over the top although it's still an 18 which is a shame as it will limit the audience.

I'd have no problem with my 15 year old watching this . In fact he may even learn a thing or two about how people can change despite the bum hand they have been given in life .

Savage has a limited cinematic release here in the UK and if you get the chance to see it , you should .

Savage has a genuinely powerful story to tell but goes about it all wrong. For starters it's told out of sequence with multiple timeline jumps back and forth to make a simple story seem complex. The camera work is bizarre and distracting. But worst of all is a myriad of scenes featuring loud nerve-jangling music with slow motion montages. No idea what that was meant to achieve other than prolong the runtime. Not to mention Jake Ryan's New Zealand accent was laughable. Speaking Aussie with a few eh bro's on the end is not speaking New Zealand. 4/10.

Good story about the harshness of growing up in a gang. A little explored world of growing up in a gang in New Zealand. Entertaining film througout. I thought the film could have had more central plot and developed the characters more.

At its heart, the cause and effect that traps and herds people into the margins of society where the rules of survival are warped back to hunter over gatherer times, peripheries the vast majority of populations are thankful to avoid and turn a blind eye to, ignorant that the marginalised are a product of our inhumane made false ecology. These are incarcerated people living perpetually imprisoned lives with opportunity locked, barred and barriered from them. A powerful piece of cinema that doesn't shy way from acknowledging the damage that can be caused to an individual when paternal, societal, and endemic neglect is allowed to culture. A culture that still permeates today, not just in the warrior lands.

Savage isn't a movie for everybody. But for some people it will be recognizable, maybe not everything but certain passages are gripping. Child abuse, violent parenthood, going down the wrong path to escape harsh reality, and of course finding the wrong crew to hang out with which is sometimes the only place you find likeminded people. I found the whole movie well made, a bit violent at times, but that's the gang life we all think about. Good acting from the whole cast also. Jake Ryan, as Damage, did a great job playing his abused character. It's not all violence, sometimes it's about compassion and forgiveness, sometimes it's emotional if you give the story a chance to unfold.