Savage Salvation is a Randall Scandal starring Jack Huston as a guy who, with his girlfriend, Willa Fitzgerald, is addicted to heroin, but when he proposes to her, she proposes they kick, and they make a go at it. But this is a Randall Scandal, and there's always a Randall mainstay waiting in the wings to cause an issue. This time it's a be-corn-rowed Swen Temmel--Michael Sirow must've been busy--who gets Fitzgerald back on the stuff, causing her to overdose and die. Now Huston is out for blood, and he won't stop until vengeance is served. Hot on his trail is local sheriff Bob De Niro, toting an understated Southern accent and an understated mustache. He wants to get to him before the authorities do. But will he get there before Huston has killed everyone dealing heroin in the area?
This is a bit of a tough one to render a verdict on. Not a lot happens in the first 45 minutes, and while it would've been great character development in an indie film about addiction starring Huston and Fitzgerald, this ain't no Sundance entry, so that means that the 45 minutes isn't really anything that couldn't be done in 15 to get us to the action sooner, especially with an actor as good as Huston selling us on his killing spree. Also, we get a taste of the spree at the very beginning, so since we know it's coming, the 45 minutes is just prolonging the inevitable. And the spree itself isn't horrible, but it is a little over the top (Stallone style). Like when Huston starts the spree by killing Temmel, he shoots him in the eye with a nail gun, so Temmel is just sitting there with a nail in his eye. And Huston is giving him the tough "tell me where your supplier is," and instead of Temmel just screaming in pain like anyone else who just had a fucking nail shot into his eye, Temmel is whimpering and begging Huston not to kill him--with a fucking nail sticking out of his eye! What do I do with that? And what am I supposed to tell you to do with it? We had other things, like Quavo as the main baddie, who's great, but he's in one or two scenes, so totally wasted; yet this is also a Randall Scandal, we expect someone like Quavo to have limited screentime--he was probably playing poker with Scandal down in Puerto Rico where this was shot, and lost a hand and the bet required him to be in this movie. Some of the other stuff that made no sense, like when Temmel lies to Fitzgerald, telling her Huston had been using behind her back, which is what gets her to use again. Just by me living in Philly and seeing people on heroin all the time, I'd know if someone around me was using, forget a former addict like herself! Yet she just believes him. Then when she dies, instead of calling 911 like a normal person, Huston dresses her in her wedding dress and takes her to be baptized, where John Malkovich looks on, trying his best to sell the bonkers-ness. Speaking of De Niro and Malkovich, they're probably the reason Huston is in this, and I don't know whether to be amazed or disappointed by how well they're selling the bonkers-ness of the whole thing to me. Ultimately the fact that this is long is what kills it, instead of 100 minutes we needed like 80, and I think that would've better allowed us to revel in the bonkers-ness.
We're actually at 58 movies for Cole S. McKay when we're finally getting him in the 50 Club, which puts him third all-time behind Dolph and Gary Daniels, and three ahead of Art Camacho, who's now in fourth place. While this isn't one of the PM classics where McKay made a name for himself on this site, it's fun to see him plying his trade in a Randall Scandal like this in 2022 with Jack Huston, Robert De Niro, and John Malkovich. When the movie turns from an indie drama about addiction to a revenge actioner around the 45-minute mark, you can almost feel McKay take over. It's not a full-on PM-fest though, and I wonder if there weren't moments where McKay looked at the cars on-set and asked Randall Scandal "you sure you don't need me to flip one of these?" Looking over his CV on IMDb, there are dozens of other films of his that are ripe for our site, a couple of which I've already watched and am just waiting to review, so it's possible he could be in the 60 Club by the time we get him into the Hall of Fame this October, which would tie him with Gary Daniels, and down the road he could pass Dolph for the most credits all-time. And the other thing is, we just started tagging him back in March, I easily could've missed some movies we've reviewed that he worked on, so he could possibly already be in the 60 Club. It just speaks to how prolific he was, especially in the 80s-90s window that we look at as the Golden Age of DTV films, but even now he's still getting after it, working to make even a Randall Scandal like this more palatable. Here's to you Mr. McKay, you're truly one of the greatest to do it.
Part of the reason I wanted to do this is it's another Bob De Niro Randall Scandall, of which we've done two others, The Killing Season and Freelancers, and I'd say this is my favorite performance of those three. He feels a little less somnambulistic here, which on the one hand helps, but on the other watching him go through the motions to get a paycheck is part of the fun of seeing him in these. Maybe having Jack Huston and John Malkovich helped. Speaking of which, Malkovich was more engaged than we'd seen him in these before too. Could Huston's presence have rubbed off? "We want to turn in a performance worthy of the kid's grandfather" maybe? Or maybe the fact that Huston was probably excited to work with them was what rubbed off on them. Either way, I guess I did appreciate it more that De Niro and Malkovich weren't mentally picturing the new kitchen island they were getting installed with the money from this film as they were reciting their lines. As an aside, with "Huston" pronounced "HEW-ston" the way the city in Texas is pronounced, as opposed to the street in NYC, which is "HOW-ston," would Huston's name have been pronounced "HUSS-ton" if he'd been born in Manhattan?
In 2023 we reviewed the documentary The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump, which birthed the term "Randall Scandal" that we give to all his movies now, and also call him, which may or may not be confusing. It gave us insight into how some of these Randall Scandals are made, and the abuse of people working under him that was part of the process. For example in this one, I saw that it was shot in Puerto Rico, and one of accounts from one of his assistants told how Randall demanded the assistant bring him his poker table from LA. The poor assistant had to fly it down there himself, on his own dime, and of course was never reimbursed. Knowing this kind of abuse was happening behind the scenes, there's also a question of whether I'm feeding into it by giving films like this a spotlight on my site. That's definitely something, now that we know how the sausage is made, we probably should be eating more plant-based stuff, but there's also something to be said for us using the reach we have to let people know about these movies too. I imagine a lot of people see this on Hulu and think it looks like a pretty good deal, but if they go to IMDb first, and see us among the currently 20 critic reviews, they may see us discussing how the sausage is made, and opt for a plant-based alternative themselves.
Speaking of making more humane food choices, the baddies were based at a dairy farm, where from what I could tell, the cows were pasture raised. Granted, they were just all hanging out outside the barn, it's possible when they were milked they were stuck in a concrete enclosure, and while I want to give Quavo as our baddie the benefit of the doubt, I wouldn't put it past him to be taking calves from their mothers at a young age so he can get more milk out of them too. Still, if our baddies were running a humane dairy farm, does that mitigate some of the hard feelings we have about them dealing drugs? I mean, what happened to all those cows after Huston killed everyone? Did De Niro get them adopted at a sanctuary farm? Or did they get shipped to a factory farm, forced to live their lives confined to a small space on a concrete floor? I imagine any vegans are reading this saying "there's no such thing as humane dairy, Matt, unless it's plant-based." So in that sense, maybe I shouldn't be giving our baddies the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps if the baddies were holed up at an almond farm, and Huston used those for cover the way he used the cows for cover when he attacked them. It could've been Randall Scandal's nod to A Midsummer Night's Dream, right?
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu here in the States, plus I've seen it on DVD at Target, which is a rarity for a movie we're covering here. It's a bit long, and suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, but the bonkers-ness of a Randall Scandal combined with some of the names may get you over the hump. And congratulations to Cole S. McKay and his entry into the 50 Club! It was a long time coming, but good to finally give him that recognition for all his great work.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13055982/
And if you haven't yet, check out my newest book, Nadia and Aidan, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!.jpg)
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