Movie Review: "Savages Crossing" (2011, Winnah Films/MVD Visual)

...often, it has been said that, movie-wise, the best ideas have long since been used up, and the ideas that are out there, are invariably being recycled, re-written and tweaked, here and there, with the initial concepts themselves alone being stale, but made 'fresh', or at least interesting, with the balanced and engaging interaction of characters involved in the concepts' scenarios. Hmmm!! Makes sense, in supposing that although the scenarios change very little, the countlessly imagined and written variety of characters...like combined chemicals...elicit different reactions and interactions...the ol' game of 'what if this type of person is thrown together with that type of person, and this type of person, and that type of person'. Looking back at the spectrum of films, spanning as far back as...well, as far back as the very beginning, the age-old scenario of a group of people...all from different walks of life, in some way, shape or form...some strangers, some not strangers, and some clearly pretending to be something, they are not...trapped together, as the result of some threat...be it monsters, gang members, frontier Indians, zombies, giant saber-toothed killer mutant gerbils...or even something as crashingly elemental as inclemently deliberating weather...with clashing egos, personality conflicts, tit-for-tat confrontations, underlinging vengeful intent, or simply the desperate act of survival, itself. In the end, if the characters aren't engagingly written well, or are ill-conceived and cliched to the point where the interaction is hardly relatable or interesting, then the well-worn scenario itself hardly matters, and the whole ball of wax falls apart. As visually striking and grim as the film proves to be, regrettably, such is the case with the lackluster, shoulder-shrugging, though somewhat redeemingly atmospheric and harrowing Aussie thriller from 2011, "Savages Crossing"......