An aristocratic, renegade white man goes hunting with a freed slave in the Old South: It sounds like “Django Unchained.”
But in the stately, persistently uninteresting “Savannah,” the duo shoots ducks, not racists and criminals, and Jim Caviezel, as the real-life duck hunter Ward Allen, is no Christoph Waltz. Allen swaggers up and down the river like an overgrown Huck Finn, accompanied by Christmas Moultrie (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Allen spouts ornate dialogue and refuses to abide by society’s norms. But he never comes across as much more than a gasbag drunk, and his romance with a rebellious society girl (Jaimie Alexander) lacks the impact of either passion or tragedy.
Ejiofor shows some presence as Christmas, despite a risible framing device in which he’s supposed to be almost 100 years old. But it’s mostly Allen’s show.
Director Annette Haywood-Carter films the proceedings with a sepia-tinged prettiness, but this is a Southern “Downton Abbey,” minus the loopy plot turns and wisecracks that make that series so addictive.