Savages

Savages

2012, R, 131 min. Directed by Oliver Stone. Starring Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demián Bichir, Sandra Echeverría.

REVIEWED By Marjorie Baumgarten, Fri., July 6, 2012

There’s so much that’s so right in Oliver Stone’s dizzying new crime thriller that its impediments stick out like speed bumps. You’ll know you’ve hit one when your vertiginous sense of WTF screeches to a manageable – and much duller – pace. I’ll give you a hint, too: The slowdown usually occurs when the film’s three young leads occupy the screen on their lonesome. Though they’re competent, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, and Aaron Johnson are hardly scintillating, and their performances pale in comparison to the spectacularly outrageous turns delivered by Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, and John Travolta. Plus, the young threesome and their love triangle never convincingly seduce the audience. The characters are besotted with one another, but that bewitchment translates feebly to the viewer. And since all the action hinges on the primacy of this threesome, it’s as though a foundation layer of the movie has fallen out. Or as Hayek’s Elena says in another context, “There’s something wrong with your love story, baby.”

Savages provides us with a glimpse into the Oliver Stone of yore – the director of lurid, visceral, and menacing crime stories – a facet of the filmmaker we haven’t seen much of since Natural Born Killers and U-Turn. The film is based on Don Winslow’s bestseller, and Winslow co-wrote the screenplay with Stone and Shane Salerno. It’s the story of Chon (Kitsch) and Ben (Johnson), independent growers and sellers of the best marijuana around. Chon is an ex-Navy SEAL who brought back the seeds for the business from Afghanistan; Ben is the botanist who, in addition to growing pot with off-the-charts THC levels, is also a do-gooder who builds water wells in Africa and performs many other charitable deeds. O (Lively), short for her given name Ophelia, or maybe her orgasmic avatar, is the woman who loves them both and lives with them in hedonistic, copacetic bliss in a luxury home in Laguna Beach, Calif.

The Mexican drug wars follow their natural path north of the border in Savages when Chon and Ben’s operation becomes subject to takeover by a cartel helmed by Elena, a ruthless but not heartless leader in a Cleopatra wig, and her chief goon and henchman Lado (Del Toro), whose vicious depravity and loathsomeness are bottomless. O is kidnapped by Elena’s minions and held as a bargaining tool. Travolta complicates things as a crooked DEA official whose hairline is receding as rapidly as his morals. Stone and cinematographer Daniel Mindel make the entire experience seem hallucinatory with their mixture of film and video imagery, saturated colors that sometimes turn to black and white, rewinds, and other optical tricks, as well as a conclusion that pulls the rug out from under the audience. It’s volatile, nasty, hypnotic, gory, and irrestible. But then O opens her mouth to continue with her vacuous and omnisciently impossible voiceover narration, and the spell is broken. Then it’s just another day at Laguna Beach.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

Support the Chronicle  

READ MORE
More Savages
ACL Live Shot: Savages
ACL Live Shot: Savages
Female UK quartet proves all too true to its name

Abby Johnston, Oct. 5, 2013

More Savages
ACL Music Fest 2013 Friday Reviews
Savages
Silence Yourself (Record Review)

Michael Toland, Oct. 4, 2013

More Oliver Stone Films
Snowden
Oliver Stone tackles the famous whistleblower

Marc Savlov, Sept. 16, 2016

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Oliver Stone delivers an enlivening and wickedly entertaining take on the occasional angels and plentiful demons that have run the country into financial ruin.

Kimberley Jones, Sept. 24, 2010

More by Marjorie Baumgarten
A Different Man
Sebastian Stan plays an actor with neurofibromatosis who regrets undergoing plastic surgery

Sept. 27, 2024

Megalopolis
Bold but frustrating vision of the American empire in decline

Sept. 27, 2024

KEYWORDS FOR THIS FILM

Savages, Oliver Stone, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demián Bichir, Sandra Echeverría

MORE IN THE ARCHIVES
One click gets you all the newsletters listed below

Breaking news, arts coverage, and daily events

Keep up with happenings around town

Kevin Curtin's bimonthly cannabis musings

Austin's queerest news and events

Eric Goodman's Austin FC column, other soccer news

Information is power. Support the free press, so we can support Austin.   Support the Chronicle