Savages
(out of 4)
Starring Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta and Demian Bichir. Directed by Oliver Stone. 129 minutes. Opens July 6 at major theatres. 18A
In Oliver Stone’s Cal-Mex potboiler Savages, the gringo actors think they’re making a romantic drama. The Latinos know it’s really a comedy, albeit a brutal one.
This makes for strange viewing. The disconnect between amorous American weed sellers (Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively) and murderous Mexican turf tusslers (Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir) is more than the physical border that separates them.
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Somewhere up the middle is John Travolta, playing a compromised Drug Enforcement Administration officer. Travolta’s just in it for the dough, both on and off the screen.
And where does this leave director Stone, who also co-writes, with Shane Salerno (the pen from the Shaft remake) and author Don Winslow, from the latter’s book of the same name?
Let’s start by saying that somebody oughta name a line of chainsaws after Stone. When he’s in the mood, and he certainly is here, he’s every bit the blunt instrument that’s used with head-chopping abandon by the Mexican druglords of his succinctly titled Savages.
Stone is more at home with straight genre material like this than when he’s trying to make a social statement, as he attempted two years ago with Money Never Sleeps, his Wall Street sequel. He candidly admitted he didn’t know what he was trying to say with that film, and it showed.
Savages harkens back to such Stone-crazy films as Natural Born Killers and U Turn, where what’s splattered is more important than what’s said.
Of course, this doesn’t stop Stone from using that hoariest of clichés, the ominous voiceover narration, which may or may not be coming from the grave. It’s the chirp of Lively’s mellow sexpot Ophelia, who is bedding both Kitsch’s Chon, an ex-Navy Seal who saw Afghan/Iraq War action, and Johnson’s Ben, a Buddhist bud-booster.
“Chon is cold metal; Ben is warm wood,” coos Ophelia, who happily demonstrates what she means in their Laguna, Calif., shared love nest. Everybody calls her O, in all likelihood because Stone was tickled by the thought of making “The Story of O.”
The two bromantic boys mesh their dissimilar skills: brawny Chon smuggles in seeds of the “world’s best weed” from his Afghan contacts; smooth-talker Ben grows it and sells it.
They’re going to need everything they have if they hope to outsmart (and outlive) La Reina (Hayek), the head of the Baja drug cartel in Mexico. She’s doing great business, running the “Walmart” of dope ops, as Travolta’s DEA guy Dennis calls it, but she wants Ben and Chon working for her.
She tells her moneyman Alex (Bichir) to make them an offer; her stateside enforcer Lado (Del Toro) will make sure they don’t refuse it. He knows that the way to two men’s hearts is through the one woman they love.
“Yeah, it’s that kind of story,” O says in the voiceover, and by this she evidently means one in which heads literally roll and explode, snitches and screw-ups get whacked and set ablaze, and there’s as much drug-taking, sex-having and babe-napping as American censors will permit for regular citizens, before running in tears home to their mamas.
Stone deserves credit for going for the hard “R” on Savages, rather than trying to water his wine with a PG-13 American rating.
But how did this film end up with such a muddled story? Kitsch and Johnson are okay on paper, especially Johnson, who really steps it up from his super nerd of Kick-Ass. Yet the two never really register as a duo or as a threesome; Lively looks good but she’s as bland as tapioca.
The three joke about being in a remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but a Care Bears adventure is more their speed. (This now makes three 2012 misfires for Kitsch, who also starred in John Carter and Battleship.)
The Latinos all know what they’re doing, and that is to pretend they’re making a cheesy Mexican telenovela for an American audience, delivering dark laughs as they swagger, bicker, bash, slice and shoot.
Del Toro plays Lado with mustache-twirling amusement, while Hayek sports a Pulp Fiction wig, possibly in homage to Uma Thurman, who was supposed to be in Savages, before all her scenes were chopped.
Stone got a little too frisky with that chainsaw, although he neglected to chop one of his two endings. Yeah, Savages is that kind of story: too dumb even to know when to finally sheath the blade.
(out of 4)Starring Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Salma Hayek, Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta and Demian Bichir. Directed by Oliver Stone. 129 minutes. Opens July 6 at major theatres. 18A
In Oliver Stone’s Cal-Mex potboiler Savages, the gringo actors think they’re making a romantic drama. The Latinos know it’s really a comedy, albeit a brutal one.
This makes for strange viewing. The disconnect between amorous American weed sellers (Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, Blake Lively) and murderous Mexican turf tusslers (Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, Demian Bichir) is more than the physical border that separates them.
MORE ON THE WEB: Woody Allen's To Rome with Love more like la schmaltzy vita
Somewhere up the middle is John Travolta, playing a compromised Drug Enforcement Administration officer. Travolta’s just in it for the dough, both on and off the screen.
And where does this leave director Stone, who also co-writes, with Shane Salerno (the pen from the Shaft remake) and author Don Winslow, from the latter’s book of the same name?
Let’s start by saying that somebody oughta name a line of chainsaws after Stone. When he’s in the mood, and he certainly is here, he’s every bit the blunt instrument that’s used with head-chopping abandon by the Mexican druglords of his succinctly titled Savages.
Stone is more at home with straight genre material like this than when he’s trying to make a social statement, as he attempted two years ago with Money Never Sleeps, his Wall Street sequel. He candidly admitted he didn’t know what he was trying to say with that film, and it showed.
Savages harkens back to such Stone-crazy films as Natural Born Killers and U Turn, where what’s splattered is more important than what’s said.
Of course, this doesn’t stop Stone from using that hoariest of clichés, the ominous voiceover narration, which may or may not be coming from the grave. It’s the chirp of Lively’s mellow sexpot Ophelia, who is bedding both Kitsch’s Chon, an ex-Navy Seal who saw Afghan/Iraq War action, and Johnson’s Ben, a Buddhist bud-booster.
“Chon is cold metal; Ben is warm wood,” coos Ophelia, who happily demonstrates what she means in their Laguna, Calif., shared love nest. Everybody calls her O, in all likelihood because Stone was tickled by the thought of making “The Story of O.”
The two bromantic boys mesh their dissimilar skills: brawny Chon smuggles in seeds of the “world’s best weed” from his Afghan contacts; smooth-talker Ben grows it and sells it.
They’re going to need everything they have if they hope to outsmart (and outlive) La Reina (Hayek), the head of the Baja drug cartel in Mexico. She’s doing great business, running the “Walmart” of dope ops, as Travolta’s DEA guy Dennis calls it, but she wants Ben and Chon working for her.
She tells her moneyman Alex (Bichir) to make them an offer; her stateside enforcer Lado (Del Toro) will make sure they don’t refuse it. He knows that the way to two men’s hearts is through the one woman they love.
“Yeah, it’s that kind of story,” O says in the voiceover, and by this she evidently means one in which heads literally roll and explode, snitches and screw-ups get whacked and set ablaze, and there’s as much drug-taking, sex-having and babe-napping as American censors will permit for regular citizens, before running in tears home to their mamas.
Stone deserves credit for going for the hard “R” on Savages, rather than trying to water his wine with a PG-13 American rating.
But how did this film end up with such a muddled story? Kitsch and Johnson are okay on paper, especially Johnson, who really steps it up from his super nerd of Kick-Ass. Yet the two never really register as a duo or as a threesome; Lively looks good but she’s as bland as tapioca.
The three joke about being in a remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but a Care Bears adventure is more their speed. (This now makes three 2012 misfires for Kitsch, who also starred in John Carter and Battleship.)
The Latinos all know what they’re doing, and that is to pretend they’re making a cheesy Mexican telenovela for an American audience, delivering dark laughs as they swagger, bicker, bash, slice and shoot.
Del Toro plays Lado with mustache-twirling amusement, while Hayek sports a Pulp Fiction wig, possibly in homage to Uma Thurman, who was supposed to be in Savages, before all her scenes were chopped.
Stone got a little too frisky with that chainsaw, although he neglected to chop one of his two endings. Yeah, Savages is that kind of story: too dumb even to know when to finally sheath the blade.
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