If The Lord Of The Rings trilogy offers one view of New Zealand, Savages delivers its polar opposite. Ripped from real-life stories of Wellington gang warfare, Sam Kelly’s film is a grim but mostly engaging takedown of masculinity. Mounted with confidence and sensitivity, and moodily shot, it’s an impressive debut finally let down by its inability to escape rote story dynamics.
The central figure is Danny (Jake Ryan), a gang-member who has earned the nickname ‘Damage’ and sports the word “Savages” tattooed across his forehead. Director Kelly sets his severe stall out from the get-go, with Danny dishing out retribution with a claw hammer to a thieving mate. These early sections have the feel of Mean Streets-era Scorsese, hanging with the characters for a singing session at a party and observing the rituals and hierarchies of a criminal subculture. During a fumbled sexual encounter, confident Flo (Chelsie Preston Crayford, who sadly disappears from the action) asks him, “Why do you wear that mask?” “So you can see who I really am,” he responds.
The relationship between Danny and Moses is the heart of the film, and it’s at its best when they are just shooting the shit.
At this point, Savage dives into two extended but well-drawn flashbacks. The first, set in 1965, picks up Danny (Olly Presling) as a child with a violent father who begins a life of crime and ends up in Borstal, where he has his face pushed into food, is sexually abused by a warden and starts a friendship with Moses (Lotima Pome’e). The second spins to 1972 as Danny (now played by James Matamua), living rough, falls in with Moses’ street gang the Savages — a crew that sport Mad Max 2 cosplay — which causes tension with brother Liam (Jack William Parker here, later Seth Flynn) who belongs to rival gang Satan’s Horde. Both these flashbacks add useful context, Kelly finding moments of poetry (an effective use of slow motion) and grace (Danny’s first spliff) as the bond between Danny and Moses grows.
Still, as the action returns to 1989, Kelly struggles to find compelling ways to inject conflict and character-growth. The relationship between Danny and Moses is the heart of the film, and it’s at its best when they are just shooting the shit. But to drive a wedge between the friends, Kelly plays on tired ideas of gang loyalty versus family commitments, as Danny is drawn to a life outside the Savages (witness the recurring sentimental note as Danny secretly visits his family and carves a notch on the fence post for each trip). While it becomes clear the point of the film revolves around the need for a family (surrogate or real), it’s just a shame that the film undoes a lot of good work to get there.