War, as they say, is hell. Serbian director Predrag Antonijević, working with writer Robert Orr and producer Oliver Stone, seems intent in making his audience feel it. This bleak, somewhat relentless film about an American mercenary in the Bosnian War found little success back in 1998. Rewatched some decades later, and its brutal moments of violence and queasy moral ambivalence give a fairly clear indication why that was. While it does not fully reach to the extremity of Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985), for example, Savior is a stark, honest depiction of just how abhorrent human behaviour can become.

Dennis Quaid plays Joshua Rose, a soldier assigned to the US embassy in Paris. When his wife and son are murdered in a terrorist attack, Joshua’s enraged reaction is to enter the nearest mosque and shoot the men he finds praying there. Several years later, and going by the name of Guy, Joshua is a mercenary fighting for the Bosnian Serbs in the Bosnian War. After saving the life of a rape victim and her infant child, he grows obsessed with escorting them to safety.

Savior assigns itself a difficult task with Joshua Rose. He is the film’s protagonist and viewpoint, fighting somebody else’s war with even knowing a local language. Within the first five minutes of the film he has committed an act of domestic terrorism. Shortly afterwards we see him commit one war crime, before standing by and allowing a second one to occur. Trauma and grief have robbed him of his humanity. His quest to save Vera (an excellent Nataša Ninković) and her daughter is clearly a wish for self-redemption, but it is likely that the audience will not be willing to see it granted.

Hollywood audiences struggle with post-Vietnam war films. A long chain of Iraq and Afghanistan-based features have found difficulty in securing any sizeable viewership, in large part because these real-life conflicts were so morally ambiguous. It is hard to form a traditional war narrative when the source is so deeply lacking in purpose, and without traditional heroes and villains. In the case of the Bosnian War, three years of horrifying war crimes form a backdrop that many viewers will find unwatchable. Ethnic cleansing, mass murder and rape, torture, and even genocide combined to by-and-large keep this conflict out of American cinema. To his credit, Antonijević does not flinch from depicting with brutal honesty the reality of this war. It is not a surprise to see Oliver Stone’s name listed as one of the producers. He is a Vietnam veteran, and has never held back from depicting war’s worst atrocities.

This is a dark, unhappy odyssey through some of the worst of human nature. While it posits a rather traditional redemption narrative, viewers might be surprised at some of the unexpected directions that it takes. Dennis Quaid is absolutely superb here, balancing a genuinely difficult role and drawing sympathy out of the worst of circumstances. David Robbins presents a sharply contrasting musical score, enriched by traditional folk songs of the region and performances by the choir of Radio Television of Serbia and the Belgrade Symphony Orchestra.

This is the best kind of underrated gem. It has been released this week onto blu-ray by Australia’s Imprint Films; they should be commended for giving Antonijević’s difficult work the attention it deserves.