The indie movie, The Wolves of Savin Hill is a very fine directorial debut for John Beaton Hill. He also wrote this story where sentimentalities and brutality clash between two best friends who have lost touch over the years. In their youth, they made a promise youth that now haunts them as they are adults. In what results is a trial of what’s left of their friendship. In how this film treats the subject matter is like that of silent lucidity.
In what they have become, Tom (David Cooley) stayed in Boston only to grow up to be an alcoholic troublemaker and Sean (Brian Scannell) relocated to Los Angeles with Tom’s sister Emily to eventually work the beat as a cop with an axe to grind. Anyone who tries to mess with him often got the end of the stick. But when Emily is found dead and news reaches home, Tom goes to LA to confront Sean. The web of deceit he finds himself in is more than he can handle.
Cooley and Scannel deliver strong performances. The plot only gets stranger at every succeeding moment, and the draw this film creates gets viewers invested into wanting to understand the psyche of each of these leading men. Hill crafted a nicely enticing film that wraps two time periods together to reveal the darkest nature of what friends are willing to do for each other. The flashbacks are far more interesting than the now.
To reveal anymore information will only spoil the causality of how these two have to contend with each other. When this film hits more festivals, viewers can discover for themselves in what human nature means according to this filmmaker. The hills have eyes and what he sees may not be necessarily good.
