Oscar winner Oliver Stone directs this adaptation of Don Wislows bestseller Savages, which follows Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch), two lifelong friends from Laguna Beach who share everything from a burgeoning marijuana empire to the same woman, O (Blake Lively). This triangle isnt just some lusty menage a trios; O loves both men equally, and they her.
Their bonds are tested when they reject a business offer from a Mexican drug cartel led by Elena La Reina (Salma Hayek). She made them the proverbial offer they couldnt refuse that they instead refused, and now her payback is swift and brutal. La Reina sends her enforcers, led by the merciless Lado (Benicio Del Toro), to kidnap O and keep her hostage for the duration of their three-year business arrangement. With help from Chons former Navy SEAL buddies, Chon and Ben enact an elaborate, bloody plan to get their girl back.
Imagine Jules and Jim meets Scarface and youll have an idea of what Savages is going for, which makes it sound a whole lot cooler than the end result. Stones movie is a lurid mess, which isnt exactly a new thing for him, but it can at least at times be an interesting mess. The biggest problem with Savages is that its a dopey love story about three boring, amoral people who you dont care about or are interested in seeing either escape The Life or be reunited.
Ben is the Good Drug Dealer who goes off to Third World countries to help the less fortunate, rejects violence and wants to quit the business. Chon is a messed-up vet of Iraq and Afghanistan who sees their competition as savages and has no problem being the brutal enforcer. O, short for Hamlets Ophelia, is
blonde and beautiful. Were told shes like a lotus flower or some s**t, but shes really just a bland, poor little rich girl who probably would have ended up on a reality show had she not hooked up with Ben and Chon.
Livelys performance is as grating and dull as her character, and the script gives her a slew of silly enlightened lines to drone on about in her narration. O is evidently in this for two only reasons: coochie and capture. Shes also dumb as a bag of hammers when chatting with her captors. Looking like a Drug Lord Jesus, Johnson tries to make Ben likable, but his character is incredibly naïve for someone whos essentially the Mark Zuckerberg of pot dealers. But, hey, hes for clean, renewable energy, so that just about makes him a hero amongst this lot of degenerates. Kitsch is less wooden here than he was in John Carter and Battleship; hes the cool one and a credible ass-kicker. With all their shirtless scenes and toking, though, they should have named their business Pecs & Pot.
Hayek is viciously appealing in a role reminiscent of the crime matriarch in Cocaine Cowboys, but her scenes with Lively are among the most confounding in the movie. (Game of Thrones does a much better job of handling such villainess/captive conversations.) Del Toro is suitably menacing as her henchman, a bearish brute who is sneakier than he seems. John Travolta damn near steals the movie in a darkly comic turn as a DEA agent playing every possible angle; he also deserves kudos for finally ditching that ridiculous toupee and showing off his balding pate. Demian Bichir plays an urbane cartel member whod be right at home talking to Crockett and Tubbs, while Emile Hirsch pops up as Ben and Chons money laundering whiz kid.
Savages script is a mess, chock full of unappealing characters, dopey dialogue and inexplicable moments, and a tone that ricochets from brutal thriller to goofy black comedy to drama. There will undoubtedly be a kneejerk reaction to the movie branding it racist (three beautiful, young white people and those vicious Latino criminals haunting them). Stones certainly no stranger to controversy or even to accusations of racial stereotypes (those claims go all the way back to Midnight Express and Scarface). I wouldnt go so far as to call Savages racist, though, as every character in the movie is a worthless s**t, regardless of their race. And the movie, as horrifically violent as it gets, actually downplays some of the more heinous, gruesome violence the Mexican cartels are renowned for.
While it was nice to see Oliver Stone return to the kind of movie he might have made back in the late 80s (probably with Charlie Sheen, Frank Whaley, Daryl Hannah, and James Woods as Travoltas character), Savages just isn't all that good and, most surprising for such an outrageous movie about drug deals gone bad, boring.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/29/savages-review
