Review: Savages

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as a philanthropist Buddhist) and Taylor Kitsch (as a former Navy SEAL) play a couple of Laguna Beach marijuana dealers, who are so close they share just about everything, even O (Blake Lively). They have gained the attention of powerful and ruthless Mexican drug czar Elena (Salma Hayek), her sadistic chief henchman (Benicio Del Toro) and her unscrupulous attorney (Demián Bichir). Elena offers the trio a chance to join up in partnership, and things go to hell when they refuse (our resident Buddhist wants to retire to do charity work in Africa!), leading to O’s kidnapping. John Travolta plays a corrupt DEA agent whose allegiances seem to go to the highest bidder. Emile Hirsch plays a tech wizard associate of the central trio.

 

Oliver Stone might be the most erratic and inconsistent filmmaker currently active (capable of great films like “Platoon”, “JFK”, and “Born on the Fourth of July” as well as turds like “Nixon”, “U-Turn”, “W.”, and “Natural Born Killers”). So with that wildly uneven pedigree combined with my general disinterest in films about druggies and drug dealers, and my general aversion to Blake Lively, I went into this 2012 film from Stone and co-writer Shane Salerno (“Alien vs. Predator: Requiem”) not expecting much. At first, I wasn’t enjoying it. Oliver was busy showing us that he has seen “Sunset Blvd” with the ‘I may or may not already be dead’ narration thing, and it was kind of like a gorgeous-looking film (Laguna Beach may be known for crap reality TV but it looks like paradise here).

 

Unfortunately, it seemed to be at the service of a sleazy story about sleazy people doing sleazy things. It didn’t seem like my cup of tea, especially with Blake Lively being her usual completely unconvincing self, including not showing her skin during a whole lotta kinky sex activity. Mystery is one thing, but why cast her at all if she ain’t gonna show the goods in what is clearly a pretty sexy film and playing a pretty liberated, trashy character? Is the flower tattoo and talk of fucking and orgasms meant to compensate? It doesn’t, it merely magnifies a director’s obvious acquiescence to a no-nudity clause in a film where nudity is obviously necessary. This is “Gossip Girl”-trashy, when the material clearly calls for something much more risqué. But Lively’s miscasting (her narration is nauseatingly bad) is an issue unto itself, just as she was wrong for her trashy role in “The Town”, too.

 

I also thought the idea of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s hippie drug dealer with a social conscience just wasn’t convincing. But his character and performance get better as the film goes along as he starts to lose his nerve a bit. Taylor Kitsch, meanwhile, might not be a great actor, but he shows quite a bit of presence and macho charisma here in a film that actually doesn’t suck. And y’know what? The film does get better as it goes along. It’s even quite exciting and tense at times. Some of the performances also work. Shea Whigham has a nice small role, and Demián Bichir (seemingly the new Joaquim de Almeida) is pretty good too, but even more impressive is the scene-stealing Benicio Del Toro. He’s creepy as hell, nasty, and intimidating in his every moment on screen. Salma Hayek, meanwhile, makes for a much better villainess than you might think, actually. If you can get past the insanely fake-looking eyebrows and awfully receding hairline, John Travolta gives one of his best and most restrained performances in years. He ain’t trying to be uber-cool (Stone can’t help himself at times, though), he’s just doing his damn job and he and the film are all the better for it. Meanwhile, what in the hell has happened to Emile Hirsch’s career? I’m not a fan, but it seems odd that he’d go from a lead role in a sex comedy (“The Girl Next Door”), to an acclaimed role in a (overrated) Sean Penn film (“Into the Wild”), to lead role in a Russian-lensed sci-fi flop (“The Darkest Hour”), to a pissweak borderline cameo in this. He seems to be slowly vanishing from relevancy as an actor.

 

This is a fine enough film, I just wish it had characters I cared about (and who aren’t as young- it doesn’t seem credible), then it’d be even better. Unfortunately, the antagonists and protagonists are all sleazy and unlikeable. I also have to harshly criticise the film’s ending. There was potential here to close out on a brilliantly nihilistic moment, but instead Stone opts for an absolutely awful ending that seems, at least in my view, to send the wrong message. Apparently this second ending was not in the original source material by Don Winslow, which just makes me even angrier. An horrendous, breathy-voiced version of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by some entity known as Yuna is the arsenic-laced icing on the cake.

 

Warts (and severed heads- you’ve been warned!) and all this is a pretty watchable, if sometimes silly film, with some fine elements. Lively’s miscasting, the unlikeable characters, and a shithouse ending hold it back from being even better. And ‘wargasms’? Really, Mr. Salerno? Geez.

 

Rating: B-