Savages (2012)

the audience applauded

So much average

Memorable, crazy movie

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This was an attempted comeback by Oliver Stone to a harder and edgier subject, the war on drugs. What I found is that several people in this movie were looking for a comeback hit; Taylor Kitsch was coming of a couple of box office disasters, Aaron Taylor-Johnson hasn't had a hit since Kick Ass, Blake Lively is returning to the screen after Green Lantern and Hick. They have a lot of solid actors in this cast and Stone seems like the right guy to direct this. I mean drugs, guns, the mob, where could this go wrong? But the bottom line is that a lot of people need this movie to hit it big and while it did get decent reviews, I have to tell you it's not going to get that kind of praise from me.*Minor Spoilers Ahead* The film is narrated by O (Blake Lively) and she introduces us to the situation. She is a young woman carrying on a devils three way of a romance with 2 marijuana dealers named Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch). They grow the best pot on the west coast of the United States. Each of them brings something to the operation. Ben has a degree from Cal-Berkeley in botany and is the brains behind the actual growing of the weed. He's essentially a hippie, he's very non-violent and believes in conducting business that way. Chon is the muscle. He is a former Navy SEAL who came back from Afghanistan with a love of cannabis and some PTSD. He is the aggression behind the operation. I would like to clarify though, he's not outwardly violent but if they have to intimidate to collect from a client, it's him running the call.The 3 of them are enjoying a thriving business. They have a great reputation with their suppliers and their customers. They also have an inside man in the DEA named Dennis (John Travolta) who watches their back. One day, they get a very violent video message from the Mexican drug cartel thug Lado (Benicio Del Toro) telling them they want to meet up and talk business. Ben is overseas and Chon and O are too stoned to properly comprehend it. After Ben gets back they talk amongst themselves about it and then they talk to Dennis who tells them that they don't really have a choice.I have to admit, reading the plot summary I could objectively see how this is a pretty cool set up. But where I thought this movie fell down was that it missed the ABCs of doing a story where the filmmakers want us to care about the fates of the characters they present to us. A) Make the characters at least relatively easy to like, or they should at least have redeeming characteristics. The biggest reason why this movie didn't connect with me is that I was so frustrated with how these people behave in stressful situations. O was the biggest problem, she's carrying on a stupid love triangle and she has no skills except being hot. When she's taken she whines to her captors about the food, her weed withdrawal and ultimately even about her not knowing who the group's leader is. You don't sympathize with Ben because he was an idiot not to know that this was going to happen. Chon is maybe the most honest character but he is so wooden (his character not Kitsch) that the movie makes it clear he's not fully human. Lado enjoys torturing and killing people. Dennis is a two-timing rat and Elena is a ruthless but ultimately soft leader with little dimension outside the fact she misses her family. I had no reason to care about any of these people and it was like watching a sporting event where you don't care who wins.B) Telling an interesting story is priority number one. I will at least give this movie credit for having a coherent plot line; most movies I hate lack that. But what parts of this story that are interesting are either wrecked by increasingly pointless bits of violence or are stretched out over the movie's ridiculous run time. This movie should have been 30 minutes shorter. The plot continues to jump around via O's uninteresting narration and repeatedly kills any momentum it is building. This movie could have been just a stupid revenge action movie with a lot of violence and guns and I would have liked it so much better. They had an interesting premise but the twists the story takes undercut it completely.Okay, I've ripped on this movie enough, let's get to some of the more admirable aspects. Stone puts a lot of effort into developing a visual style for the movie. Normally I would like this but it didn't mean a whole lot when I was so frustrated with the characters and the meandering plot. But I can respect the effort that was put in to it. I also thought some of the acting was o.k. I would give Selma Hayek and Taylor Kitsch the best marks. I don't like Aaron Taylor-Johnson here, he seems really unemotional, he's just not effective in Savages. Del Toro has zip dimension to his character and all he does is betray and torture people, he's better in Sicario. Travolta was fine and Blake Lively has been good in other things but I couldn't enjoy her performance because of her character.I started out wanting to like this movie. I could tell it was going to be edgy but I just got so tired of it by the end and I just gradually grew more and more angry with it. There's no excuse for the terrible characterization or the 2+ hours this movie takes to wrap up. There were okay points but that doesn't redeem Savages.

This was a cracking film. The cast is just fantastic; there are plenty of younger stars, but the big three, Hayek, Travolta and Del Toro are electric, even though the story isn't exactly centred around them, when they appear it's first rate, Saturday night entertainment - action, guns, violence and good old American, 1980s, Christian morals thrown in for good measures. The title is god awful, even given the theme of the film (no spoilers here), it doesn't make any sense to me that they'd call the film Savages - Beautiful Savages maybe. Any way, apart from that minor criticism there is nothing about the actual film that is half-baked or ill conceived - it rocks from start to finish and sees Oliver Stone return to true form, who has had some belters, but he's had some utter doozers too, Savages comes under the former.

What we have here is a Mexican cartel drug thriller from director Oliver Stone. What could go wrong with that? The film is dripping with sun-bleached style, and there's plenty of violence and sex in the mix. A shame, then, that the script is so very predictable and makes huge and continuous mistakes throughout, leaving this a failure of a movie.The first problem with the film is the entire lack of likable characters. Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch are the most vapid and unlikeable leads ever; they follow in the line of the usual pothead dummy heroes (as in American ULTRA and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) and I hated both of them from the very beginning. Blake Lively's character is rubbish, a typical air-head blonde, and the viewer is forced to sit through her extended screen time for no little reason other than to pad the story out.Which leads me into the running time: this is way too long for what should be a tense and exciting thriller. Lots of it feels repetitive or boring. There are a few action highlights, but the overall mood is artificial and long-winded. John Travolta gives the best performance in his minor role as a corrupt drugs agent, but check out Salma Hayek's cartel boss; she's surprisingly terrible. And I'm still not sure what to make of Benicio del Toro's character, and I don't think the scriptwriters knew what to do with him either...

I know of acclaimed director, Oliver Stone, who released one stylish, deep-thinking, gritty classic film after another. Now, we find that someone else has only gone and stolen his name and is releasing films, pretending to be him... oh, wait, my mistake - it IS Oliver Stone.Perhaps, Oliver Stone has suffered a nasty knock to the head recently and been duped into taking on this film when he wasn't thinking straight? Or maybe he was kidnapped by aliens and replaced with an identical clone who makes this sort of movie. Either way, it's hard to believe that the man who made Platoon, JFK and Natural Born Killers would stoop so low. Actually, that's unfair. If you're into gangster-type films and you just so happened to watch this, you may think it wasn't that bad. Nothing brilliant, but certainly not rubbish. And you'd be right. However, it's an OLIVER STONE film, therefore with that sort of quality name attached to it, you just expect much more.It's about a trio of drug dealers (two men and one woman), all of which are 'in love.' Then, one day their threesomes are interrupted by a nasty ol' Mexican cartel demanding they take over their business. Then, to make matters worse, the Cartel Cliché only go and kidnap the two guys' girl, leaving them with no one for their ménage a trois. Therefore, they have to go on a rampage to get her back.Now, this set-up leaves us with some awkward questions. First of all the three 'heroes' are all drug dealers. They live a carefree and lavish lifestyle and it's hard to give a damn whether they get completely wiped out by the Mexicans or not. Secondly, the girl (or Blake Lively) is possibly the most annoying on-screen character this side of Jar Jar Binks. The whole first half hour of the film is taken up with her voice-over, making her come across as a voice in your head which just won't go away. Then, even when she does get kidnapped, she starts complaining about the accommodation and food the drug dealers are offering. Seriously... if I was those two guys I would have placed an add for a new threesome partner online and left her to the Mexicans a long time ago!Plus the film is long. It tries to be epic, but it does drag in places. Then you have John Travolta, popping up occasionally to majorly overact. To counter this you have the - normally excellent - Benicio Del Toro coming across as if he's half asleep.Don't get me wrong, the film isn't bad. There are a few cool scenes to make you sit up and take notice, but the whole package just seems a bit underdeveloped and not worthy of Oliver Stone's name.If you really like gangster/drug deal films, then give it a go - you might like it. But, a lot of criticism has been poured on its ending. I won't give anything away, but I'll certainly say it's novel. You'll either love it or hate it.