Savior

Released 1998
Stars Dennis Quaid, Natasa Ninkovic, Nastassja Kinski, Stellan Skarsgard, Sergej Trifunovic, Neboisa Glogovac
Directed by Peter Antonijevic

After losing his beautiful wife and young son in a terrorist bombing, Joshua Rose (Quaid) avenges their death in a murderous rampage. To escape his crime, he joins the Foreign Legion and assumes the name of Guy. But as a mercenary for the Serbs, Guy is still possessed by his mission of vengeance - until he meets Vera (Ninkovic), a young Serb girl pregnant with her Muslim rapist's child. Together they embark upon an unforgettable journey of survival through a war-shredded world. He is her only hope for survival. She is his only chance for redemption.

Summary by www.netflix.com

Immediately after his wife and son are killed by a Muslim terrorist bombing, Joshua (Quaid) walks to a Mosque and shoots eight Muslims. Although this film was made in 1998, all I could think of was September 11, 2001. I think a great many people around the world felt like doing exactly what Joshua did, and I think it's a testament to Western values that so little violence was actually directed toward Muslims after the worst terrorist act in human history. We want to find the responsible parties and punish them, and just as importantly we want to avoid punishing those who are not involved. In this movie, we have an American man who reacts in a way many of us wish we could react but know we can't. Later Joshua joins the Foreign Legion for the purpose of killing more Muslims, but what makes this film difficult is Joshua is stationed in Bosnia. If it had been the Middle East, things would have been pretty straightforward. Instead, it's in the Balkans, which is a quagmire that I personally can't understand. This complicates things, because there are no good guys in this war. There are just three groups of people that have been warring for centuries. In fact, they've been warring for so long, they no longer wage war--it seems all they do is commit atrocities against civilians. Joshua is more than willing to commit these atrocities alongside the Serbs, but after three years his hatred starts to wane. He begins to see them as human, but it's not until he recognizes that his side is no better than the Muslims that he begins to change. When he can no longer take his partner's brutality, he rescues Vera. At this point it looks like the film is going to turn into a conventional story where the woman rescues the man's soul and they live happily ever after raising the Muslim child as their own. It looks like this will be the case until near the end, when Vera is part of a mass murder by some sadistic soldiers. I don't even know what side the soldiers were from, but this was the turning point in the movie. Joshua had a choice to try to save Vera's life, but he would have sacrificed his own as well as the baby's. He had about a minute to decide whether he should try to save the woman he's falling in love with or the newborn that he's been caring for. It was one of those hellish choices in war, and this movie didn't cop out with an action ending. Instead, it borrowed from the final M*A*S*H episode, and allowed both Joshua and Vera to be redeemed. --Bill Alward, January 29, 2002