Tarantino-mania may finally be subsiding in the US, but it's alive and well abroad, as evidenced by the British thriller DAD SAVAGE (which went straight to video in the States), an insufferably arch heist-and-bloody-aftermath-multiple-flashback movie starring a ludicrously miscast
Patrick Stewart as an English "cowboy" and tulip-growing gangster.
A jeep carrying Dad Savage (Patrick Stewart) and H (Kevin McKidd) crashes through the wall of a deserted farmhouse and lands in the cellar. Of the three people inside the house--Bob (Joe McMadden), Vic (Marc Warren), and Chris (Helen McCrory)--only Bob is seriously injured. Accusing the three of
killing his son Sav (Jake Wood), Dad pulls a rifle on them and orders them to talk. A flashback reveals that sometime earlier, Bob and Vic had been hired to work on Dad's tulip farm. H, who is Dad's assistant, inadvertently tells Bob and Vic about a stash of money that Dad keeps hidden in the
woods. Bob and Vic decide to steal the money and abduct and torture Sav until he reveals where it's buried. Bob and Vic dig up a money bag, but they're unaware it's a decoy. Sav manages to grab a gun and fires some shots at Bob and Vic, who flee into the night. H comes along and sees Sav digging
up the real money bag and forces Sav at gunpoint to give him the bag, but during a struggle, H's gun goes off and kills Sav. Hearing the shots, Dad goes into the woods to investigate and sees that his bags have been dug up. He picks up H and they follow Chris to the farmhouse where he crashes his
jeep into the wall. Back to the present, Dad kills Bob and Vic, but the ceiling collapses and crushes him to death. H dies of injuries received in the crash and Chris escapes.
DAD SAVAGE might not be the absolute nadir of the self-consciously hip post-Tarantino crime movies, but it's certainly in there pitching. Making her feature debut, television director Betsan Morris Evans evidently wants to be the British Kathryn Bigelow; that is, a woman who can be as rough and
tough as the big boys, making nasty, testosterone-filled movies with lots of gore, four-letter words, and empty stylization. Following the US indie blueprint, Morris and writer Steve Williams include the requisite torture scene, monosyllabic nicknames, "quirky" characters (such as a British
criminal/tulip farmer who loves country-western music), and most importantly, a fractured structure employing pointless flashbacks in an attempt to provide suspense and depth that isn't in the script. It's hard to gauge the quality of the performances since all of the characters are so venal and
vile, and all they do is scream obscenities in thick and incomprehensible accents. Stewart has the meatiest role, but his character is a cipher whose "criminal" activities are never even specified, although the scene where he line-dances to a Patsy Cline song while wearing a black cowboy outfit
has to be seen to be believed. (Graphic violence, extreme profanity.) leave a comment