Savannah movie review & film summary (2013)

His name is Ward Allen (Jim Caviezel), and the film's story is supposedly true, drawn from a book of anecdotes about a man evidently regarded by his contemporaries as a mythically colorful contrarian. Born in Savannah in 1856, Allen attended Oxford University where he imbibed the beauties of Shakespeare and the classics, but on returning home, he decided that neither the professions nor gentleman-farming suited his nature. So he devoted his life to duck hunting, in the company of his sidekick Christmas Moultrie (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a former slave.

Allen's story is narrated by the 95-year-old Moultrie (scenes that involve some terrible old-age makeup for Ejiofor), who begins with an anecdote that's later repeated, as if it's especially wonderful or illuminating. In it, young Allen, visiting Russia, has half his moustache shaved off by a barber; enraged, he tries to kill the man but is prevented by three Russians. The viewer can't help but wonder why this scene is in the movie at all, as we hear nothing else about Allen in Russia, about his devotion to his moustache, or about why the barber gives him such a bad shave. One suspects that Allen's admirers simply found the tale wildly funny. But in the movie it only serves to suggest—inadvertently—that the man was boorishly vain and violence-prone.

"Savannah" is rife with such unintended implications. Allen's big problem in life, as the film tells it, is that the law puts limits on duck hunting, and he can't resist violating them. This leads to several scenes in the courtroom of an indulgent judge (Hal Holbrook), who shares what seems to be Savannah's universal bemusement with Allen's antics and verbosity and usually lets him off with mere wrist-slappings. Somehow, these appeals to the jollity of law-breaking come off as forced and inane. (Absurdly, the film ends with a title telling us that Allen was "a champion of common sense game laws, fair to both hunter and game." It doesn't explain how ducks might regard being killed off-season or in excessive numbers as "fair.")