(Savior - Soldat der Hölle [de])
USA / Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1998
d: Predrag Antonijević
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 1 us)
sc: Robert Orr
c: Ian Wilson (DeLuxe Color, Panavision)
e: Ian Crafford, Gabriella Cristiani
pd: Vladislav Lašić, Zoé Sakellaropoulo
m: David Robbins
p: Oliver Stone, Janet Yang (Initial Entertainment Group (IEG))
w: Dennis Quaid, Stellan Skarsgård, Nataša Ninković, Sergej Trifunović, Dušan Perković, Nebojša Glogovac, Nastassja Kinski, Kosta Andrejević, Ljiljana Krstić, Sanja Zogović, Veljko Otašević, Vesna Trivalić, Marina Bukvicki, Svetozar Cvetković, Pascal Rollin, Catlin Foster, John MacLaren, Irfan Mensur
pr: 01 Mai 1998
aw: Sochi International Film Festival 1998 Best Actress Natasa Ninkovic
rt: 103:30 min
dvd-rl: 20 Apr 1999
ar: 2.35:1 (16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen)
sd: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround • English Dolby 2.0 Surround • Spanish Dolby 2.0 Surround • Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0
st: English, Spanish; CC
supp: SIDE A
• The Film
• Audio Commentary by director Predrag Antonijević
• Theatrical Trailer
• Booklet with Production Notes
SIDE B
• Pan&Scan version of the film
Two soldiers enter a bomb-shattered house. There are bodies on the floor. A baby has been hidden in the closet; the child's grandmother lies petrified on the bed. The soldiers - a Serb and a foreign mercenary - chop off the old woman's finger for sport. We are in Bosnia, 1993. The Serb's sister is returned to him in a prisoner swap. She is pregnant after being raped by her Muslim captors. Shamed and dishonoured, the man beats the baby out of her. Before he can finish the job, he is shot dead by the mercenary, who undertakes to transport the suicidal mother and newborn infant to safety. This is a relentlessly grim and harrowing movie. It's said that military recruitment tends to rise after even the best anti-war films. Only a psychopath would volunteer for the hell Quaid goes through here. This Oliver Stone production squares up to the war in Yugoslavia and never looks for the Hollywood cop-out, save, perhaps, for the first five minutes, a redundant, perfunctory prologue which attempts to explain Quaid's 'motivation', and dispatches with Kinski before the credits have rolled. It's unnecessary, because Quaid's dead eyes tell you all you need to know - this is a brave, concentrated, resolutely unsympathetic performance unlike anything he's done before. The politics are even-handed, the violence brutal and unflinching. It's hard to recommend a movie that resembles nothing so much as a good kick in the head, but Serbian director Antonijević gives it a raw, ugly force that feels not only authentic, but legitimate.
— TCh, Time Out Film Guide
