“We hit Tarzan!”

Justin’s rating: This review is sponsored by Rump Wrangler

Justin’s review: Wish me the best of all luck as I try to put Savage into a singular category. Is it an action revenger? Is it a scifi superhero flick? Is it a caveman movie? Is it all about an unexpected encounter with the extraterrestrial kind? Is it a fascinating exploration of mid-90s virtual reality? Somehow yes and somehow no to all of the above.

Olivier Gruner (Nemesis) is Alex, a Navada rancher who has a family for about seven-and-a-half minutes in this movie before evil land barons/Microsoft tech support dweebs firebomb his house, shoots him in the face, and slashes his wife’s throat. He somehow survives — plot armor is amazing — and eventually wanders into the desert where he finds a magical cave where aliens give him superpowers. Thanks to this, he’s become incredibly strong and has the ability to make electronics short, but the tradeoff is that Alex becomes allergic to clothes.

He’s become… savage. And he’s out to make the tech bros that stole his house really regret their sloppy execution.*

I don’t know what threats the Titan Corporation might be on guard for, but I can assure you that a mostly naked French kickboxer with alien-infused powers was not mentioned at the last security briefing. That’s because they’re a little too preoccupied with their virtual reality toys (this was 1996, after all) and of their high-tech interfaces. Also, they hired the romantic lead of Cool as Ice to be their chief hacker, which is what you get with budget cuts.

But when the lead CEO Reese finds out that Alex is alive, the guy goes absolutely bonkers and starts hiring snipers and hitmen left and right. This is the biggest threat to his company, he decides, and he best deal with it by instructing his minions to mow down dozens — seriously, dozens — of civilians in the hopes that his foe might be one of them.

Because this movie isn’t stuffed with enough insanity, Reese also has some giant alien artifact that he claims is some virtual reality internet game and will make him immortal… if he could only get it to work. Maybe he could try turning it off and on again?

Reese leans on all of his connections to sic the entire LAPD on Savage and his midriff hockey cop girlfriend, and those kinds of odds are what Savage likes. He also likes a good road trip, so they squeeze that in before a final confrontation with a giant alien VR artifact.

At the end of a very strange day, this movie is simply an excuse for a mostly mute Gruner to hulk out on bad guys and lay the groundwork for a new family with a cute police officer/hockey player. The over-the-top fights are the real treat of Savage, as Alex jumps down onto people from above — sometimes multiple times in the same scene — and assumes a werewolf stance for the inevitable face-slapping. Oh, and he gets mutant healing powers that spits out bullets after he’s been shot.

The odd juxtaposition of caveman posturing and mid-90s hacking meets in this, and this only, movie. Alex somehow gets telepathic Googling skills as well — why not? — which makes me think that the aliens were just pranking humanity at this point.

Savage is wildly violent and even more wildly entertaining with how ridiculous it is. It’s not the movie you’d expect it to be, because it’s not the movie anyone would anticipate. The plot is muddled at best, the action is thrilling at the least, and the special effects pull out all the stops. You really won’t see anything quite like this, so you owe it to your dorky self to see it at least once.

*Justin hopes you appreciate the double meaning here.

Intermission!

• When your opening credits describe this as a “picture show,” you know you’re in for something special
• Why are you varnishing a chair indoors? In your kitchen?
• What kind of smoke/firebomb combo are they using here?
• Eating tiny ants doesn’t seem that filling of a meal
• These cave drawings are quite neat and consistent
• I don’t know how “Rump Wrangler” got approved as a sexual harassment-themed video game
• “This guy needs a hose-down! He smells like a goat!”
• That’s a whole lot of identical bedroom monitors
• “Welcome to the gerbil cage, big guy.”
• He’s got huge jumping powers
• “Gerbils ate each other!” A good excuse as any.
• Titan made a VR game where you can be a cat burglar for some reason
• Gotta steal some little circle sunglasses, because this is the ’90s, and you’re a cool hero!
• Female amateur hockey players, always getting into trouble by slapping guys’ butts
• I love the serving trays that are somehow laced with flashing neon
• Spot your target in a crowded club? Better have seven goons draw heavy guns and start randomly firing all willy-nilly! They even blow up the sign!
• Cops get really jazzed at mass murder shoot-outs
• “Please Mr. Savage, don’t hurt me.”
• “Now they’re using his RAGE as a perfect TOOL for my destruction.”
• Video game companies sometimes hire snipers to hang out on top of skyscrapers during the broad daylight
• Alex’s amazing leap from one skyscraper to the next, ignoring all the laws of physics
• The tech guy has a room hosting what looks like a pod that turns you into a fly-person
• Make sure you order your security guys to wear sunglasses indoors
• “We better hurry and deliver our speeches.”
• If you hold a girl hostage, compound things by stroking her hair
• Lizard algorithms can access the beast within!
• Right through the ceiling! That’s the way to make an entrance!
• Cop love interest is down to a midriff tank top. She loves to shout too. I’d marry her.
• We’ve got E. Honda from Street Fighter and Clark Griswold’s co-worker from Christmas Vacation here.
• “This is really spooky. Where is everybody, company picnic?”
• TECHNOLOGY IS GOD on the chalkboard
• Savage vs. 45 LAPD cops, and nobody fires a bullet
• “Does this sound sort of New Age stupid to you?” Yes, yes it does.
• Random gas jockey playing on a VR headset. As we all totally did in the ’90s.
• Well, she melted quickly