Sav­age

Sav­age opens with a tat­too-faced man nick­named ​“Dam­age” smash­ing a fel­low gang member’s hand with a claw ham­mer. One expects an unflinch­ing exploita­tion romp but first-time direc­tor Sam Kel­ly instead offers a con­sid­ered look at tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty in New Zealand. More bru­tal­i­ty fol­lows but there is also feel­ing and, even­tu­al­ly, growth.

It’s 1989 and mid­dle-aged Dam­age, né́e Dan­ny, (Jake Ryan) is chief enforcer of the Sav­ages, a crew run by best pal Moses (John Tui), a Māori gang pres­i­dent whose tenure looks increas­ing­ly uncer­tain as dis­sent­ing cohorts vie for his posi­tion. The Sav­ages hang out in what looks like a decrepit scrap­yard, far removed from the glam-trash sex­i­ness and lucra­tive gun-run­ning of, say, Sons of Anarchy.

A flash­back to 1965 shows how a scary, pre­sum­ably vio­lent father and pre-pubes­cent Danny’s rob­bery of a sweet shop lead him to the Borstal where he meets Moses. The pair become friends when Dan­ny stops Moses from being beat­en by a war­den and admin­is­ters ret­ri­bu­tion with the warden’s own cosh.

Dan­ny is sex­u­al­ly abused by anoth­er war­den and his life­time of male mis­trust cal­ci­fies. In 1978, Moses starts the Sav­ages with a pugna­cious spo­ken man­i­festo. ​“We’ll take your cars and your house,” he spits and Dan­ny has to choose between sid­ing with his estranged broth­er Liam and Moses’ nascent upsetters.

As with his 2011 short Lamb, Kel­ly based the sto­ry on real-life NZ gang tales and the mov­ing tri­par­tite sto­ry has a refresh­ing authen­tic­i­ty. Ryan is con­vinc­ing as a bro­ken bru­talis­er and Tui like­wise as a man who let pow­er go his head: King Lear in sleeve­less den­im. The film doesn’t have a sub­stan­tial part for a woman nor much to say bar the obvi­ous about abused men becom­ing agents of violence.

Still, Kelly’s work has promise, even if a New Zealand crime fam­i­ly is more mem­o­rably por­trayed in 1994’s Once Were Warriors.