Independent film-maker Steven Murphy's witheringly skewed melodrama 'My Saviour' takes the familiar western anti-hero trope of darkly charismatic existential loner and somewhat bravely spins his very own idiosyncratic, fascinatingly bizarre take in the singularly strange tale of cruelly ostracized single-mother Monica (Bayley Freer), estranged from her beloved son and ceaselessly bickering family, boozily harassed by bellicose, ill-bred locals, the melancholy, increasingly withdrawn Monica openly expresses her ardent wish for salvation, and, as if by some perverse magic, her very own dark angel dutifully arrives in the moody, muscular, grimly-fashioned guise of the intense, plainly disturbed pugilist Michael Brossman (Steven Murphy).
So far, so delightfully strange, but the increasingly twisted, co-dependent relationship between the sexually reawakened Monica and the abusive, psychologically warped, fleet-fisted enforcer makes for deliciously off-key viewing, much like Robert Mitchum's Preacher, Michael Brossman hides an especially wicked peccadillo, but the monochromatic text is frequently pedantic, doing little to aid Murphy's colourless performance, while undeniably Alpha, he lacks the nuance for the viewer to effectively suspend disbelief, but the talented Bayley Freer's earnestly uninhibited portrayal of Monica has much to recommend it, while her profound physical attraction to the burly nutjob Brossman feels arbitrary, it is nonetheless played with laudable humanity. What 'My Saviour' lacks in narrative subtlety is compensated by the surprisingly brutal scenes of physical violence, domestic abuse, severe emotional torment, and unbound psychotronic weirdness! Admittedly, I have no clue what tonality writer/director Steven Murphy was striving for, but the sinister drama's sporadic hysteria proved to be vastly entertaining, and with a few additional drafts of the script, he may really have had something. At its best,'The Saviour' plays out like an especially lurid, Abel Ferrara-directed episode of 'Brookside'.
So far, so delightfully strange, but the increasingly twisted, co-dependent relationship between the sexually reawakened Monica and the abusive, psychologically warped, fleet-fisted enforcer makes for deliciously off-key viewing, much like Robert Mitchum's Preacher, Michael Brossman hides an especially wicked peccadillo, but the monochromatic text is frequently pedantic, doing little to aid Murphy's colourless performance, while undeniably Alpha, he lacks the nuance for the viewer to effectively suspend disbelief, but the talented Bayley Freer's earnestly uninhibited portrayal of Monica has much to recommend it, while her profound physical attraction to the burly nutjob Brossman feels arbitrary, it is nonetheless played with laudable humanity. What 'My Saviour' lacks in narrative subtlety is compensated by the surprisingly brutal scenes of physical violence, domestic abuse, severe emotional torment, and unbound psychotronic weirdness! Admittedly, I have no clue what tonality writer/director Steven Murphy was striving for, but the sinister drama's sporadic hysteria proved to be vastly entertaining, and with a few additional drafts of the script, he may really have had something. At its best,'The Saviour' plays out like an especially lurid, Abel Ferrara-directed episode of 'Brookside'.
