Oliver Stone is a director who is known by most to be a “serious” filmmaker. His movies are usually heavy loaded with social and political messaging and his style is usually dower and nose thumbing. However, from time to time we can get a different Oliver Stone who just enjoys his popcorn and explosions as much as any other dude. This would be the Oliver Stone who wrote the “Scarface” remake and who directed movies like “Natural Born Killers” and “Any Given Sunday”. I like that Oliver Stone but it’s been a while since we have seen him do any work, since he has been too busy doing failed attempts at politically important pictures like “World Trade Center” and “W”. So with the opening of “Savages” this weekend—a violent drug-dealing thriller—It seems like maybe he could cleanse his pallet away from Oscar-bait and remember how to entertain people again.
“Savages” is based on a popular pulp novel of the same name and stars a cast of young new hopefuls, as well as established Hollywood veterans. The story follows Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson who play Ben and Chon, two So-Cal burnouts who have manufactured the best weed ever produced in the west-coast and who find themselves at odds with the Mexican cartel, who wants a cut of their success. Ben’s a peaceful hemp-wearing Phish enthusiast, whereas Chon is an emotionally wounded Iraq vet with a short fuse. Ben wants to make peace and give up but Chon insists that he call his sniper palls and start an all-out war for their turf. Midway through the film, Blake Lively’s character Ophelia—joint girlfriend to both dealers--is kidnapped by the cartel and Ben and Chon have to figure out how get her back and split the country before they get killed.
One of the major problems with this film is that Blake Lively as Ophelia is the focus character throughout duration of the story. She narrates much of the first and second acts and we see everything through her perspective. Unfortunately she is the least interesting person on screen and her stilted narration is laughably bad. Aaron Johnson, known to most people still as “Kick-Ass”, is unrecognizable in this role and has a lot of charisma that hints at a bigger career in the future. After seeing Taylor Kitsch fumble his way through “John Carter” and “Battleship” earlier this year, I wonder why and how he has managed to find his way into movies he has no business being in. Unfortunately he is equally less appealing in this film. However, when the grown-ups get to play and we see Selma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro chewing it up as the blood thirsty drug lords and John Travolta as a double-crossing DEA agent, the movie kicks into a much more comfortable mode of B-movie hysteria that reminded me of the kind of fun in Stone’s other desert noirs like “Natural Born Killers” and “U-Turn”.
Though it would be easy to say that “Savages” isn’t a good movie, it’s certainly an entertaining one. Having recent television shows like “Weeds” and “Breaking Bad” treading this territory with more gravitas and success, what you have instead is a fast-paced genre exercise with some fun editing and cheesy performances. Even though so much of this screenplay is unbelievably dopey and the choose-your-own-adventure ending is downright frustrating, I can’t hate this movie because it gave so much visceral joy. What’s more, “Savages” is a hard-R rated movie released in the middle of June and it doesn’t have any robots or superheroes in it and we should to support more diverse programming like this.
Full of hammy acting and ridiculous dialogue, this A-budget exploitation thriller keeps things moving and bleeding along, even if your eyes will be tired from rolling by the time it's over. Oliver Stone does everything he can to keep you entertained with style and ultra-violence, and usually he is doing his job, but the pointless voice-over and the befuddling ending(s) keeps me from fully recommending this sometimes fun, sometimes infuriating piece of summer sleaze. But this is what DVD rentals are made for.
Grade: C+
Originally published in The Basic Alternative/Aug-2012
No comments:
Post a Comment