Holy Crap haven't been on here in awhile! Before I start if anyone wants to watch my video review of savages click here AMAZING REVIEW. Anyway guys I haven't done a blog in a long time and so I thought I would get back to it at least for right now because I'm an inconsistent little shit. So, today I have my review for Oliver Stone's new drug/crime flick savages to review.
Savages follows 2 guys name Ben and Chon who are pot dealers and growers in Laguna Beach, CA. Ben s buddhist and a pacifist and Chon is the brawn (yes that rhymes.) They have a shared girlfriend Ophelia played by the woman of my dreams (besides Mila Kunis of course), Blake Lively. They know about this and are cool with it and O is too they even have a 3 way scene in the movie. One day the Mexican Drug Cartel comes to offer them a deal but Chon says they will double-cross them, so they decline their offer. As you know, most drug cartels get pretty upset over that sort of thing so they kidnap O and hold her hostage. This causes war between the two groups and Ben and Chon vow to get her back.
Savages has a lot of problems, okay? But dammit, this movie was a lot of DAMN FUN and had a great summer vibe watching this film. Oliver Stone always gets great performances out of his actors even if its Charlie Sheen and this flick is no exception. Ben played by Aaron Johnson is very good and Taylor Kitsch is... Taylor Kitsch. Blake Lively showed that she is a good actress when a good director is present (i.e. the town) and here she is good but had the WORST dialogue but I will get to that later. The supporting cast however, is fantastic. Salma Hayek who I usually find a weak actress was very good and intimidating. Not only was she believable as the head of the cartel but she also a human character and had an emotional story arc and back story. John Travolta has a small part as a DEA agent and he was a lot of fun and had a lot of his travolta-isms excluding his massages in this movie. But the scene stealer was by far Benecio Del Toro. My god is this guy scary. Benecio's character is a guy named Lado who is Salma Hayek's right hand man. Whenever he is on screen he captures your attention and keeps you at the end of your seat because you don't know what limb he will chop off next. There is a confrontation between him and John Travolta that is really amazing because Oliver Stone's direction of that scene combined with Benecio's character and screen presence made it nail bitingly tense. Oliver Stone also makes the romance between the 3 main characters very sexy and provides some nice, steamy, romance amidst all the violence.
Savages does have some MAJOR problems that prevent from being a fantastic movie. One the dialogue which was co-written by Stone is occasionally unbearable. For example Blake Lively, when talking about her sexual experiences with Chon, she says, "I had orgasms, he had wargasms" THAT IS NOT EVEN A JOKE THAT IS A LINE DELIVERED VERY SERIOUSLY. Also, a lot of people hate Blake Lively's narration but I don't think it's her fault because she had to read the terrible lines of dialogue. The pacing is also off. Sometimes the movie is relentlessly entertaining and fast paced, and other times it is slow and uninteresting. Oliver Stone tries to make up for this with cool visuals but even he seems to be ripping off other director's styles suck as Tarantino when classical music plays when someone is killed and len's flares like J.J. Abrams, however the cinematography is pretty gorgeous. However, the most controversial thing about Savages is the ending. Not giving it away of course, but let's just say the have ending, they say no that's not what reallly happened, and they give you a bait and switch ending which is not as ballsy as the original ending. Most said the ending killed the movie for them and I can see why but overall, I found the ending to satisfying enough to still really enjoy the movie for all it did right. Saying that, the ending is pretty anti-climatic and the original ending fit a lot better with the tone of the movie.
Overall, Savages is a flawed film, but it's a damn fun one and has some amazing performances and a engaging story and that's hard to find in a lot of summer movies. Despite the major flaws, Savages is one my biggest surprises of the year and one of Oliver Stone's best of the past 5. Savages is a sexy, violent, gritty and all around entertaining Oliver Stone flick that I will actually pick up on Blu-Ray.
4 Out Of 5 Stars
