Savages: Movie Review

Savages: Movie Review

Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, John Travolta
Director: Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone returns to the big screen with this lurid tale of drugs deals, cartels and rivalries.

In this pulpy, trashy and violent film, Taylor Kitsch stars as Chon, who's best friends with Aaron Johnson's Ben. The pair have been tight for years and live it up on Laguna Beach thanks mainly to a business growing and selling dope.

But not only do they live the high life, they share a girlfriend O (played by Blake Lively in post Gossip Girl career mode) who they both care about. 

However, when the trio receive a video showing decapitations at the hands of a drugs cartel in Mexico, they're set on a collision course with the cartel, its enforcer Lado (Benicio del Toro) and its shadowy head honcho. 

The cartel wants a partnership and won't take no for an answer - so the trio plans to move out to Indonesia and ride it out. But when O's kidnapped, they find their options running out and their love for O sorely tested....

Savages is your typical Oliver Stone film; it's stylish, ultra violent, sexy and trashy but a wee bit shallow in terms of any emotional connection.

The menage a trois mix with drugs and kidnapping works well as a story device and idea complete with Stone's use of heightened colour behind the lens but it's definitely hard to get behind any of the main three as they face obstacle after obstacle.

Blake Lively has a disconnected voiceover in parts of the film which detracts from any tension within (of which there is frankly little given that the odds are supposed to be so high) and Benicio Del Toro spends the opening portion of the film simply mumbling from his Hoff-like hair and dodgy mo. A relative lack of danger prevents you from actually engaging with this and it's almost as if Stone wasn't quite sure what to do with the characters; not once did I feel anything remotely nearing a care or concern for O and whether she'd make it.

Johnson fares well as Ben, a nice stoner dude who really finds himself having to make some terrible choices and he at least manages to convince that he's having a hard time with some of this; Travolta barely makes his presence felt throughout and del Toro eventually manages to add a level of delicious danger as the enforcer, pulling you back in just as you're about to check out and roll your eyes. I've not read the source material that this has come from, but it did feel at times, like the writers had lost their ideas of what they wanted for these characters as they struggled to extricate themselves from the web of danger.

Taylor Kitsch and Salma Hayek impress by adding some new characters to their repertoire - Kitsch, in particular, impresses with his simmering powderkeg former Afghan marine persona, finally showing a bit more depth to the roles he's willing to take on and bare all for (both literally and metaphorically). Hayek's equally good as the bitch running the cartel, but it's frustrating to have the tough woman act crumble so quickly near the end.

That's perhaps symptomatic of the whole of Savages really - a frustrating time at the movies; it's good to see Stone back in some kind of form and while the ending's certainly going to irritate some, it's perhaps worth taking a punt on Savages but only for some of the central performances.

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