Savages Review

Plot Summary:
Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) are top marijuana growers who share a girlfriend O (Blake Lively) and are very successful in the growing business. One day, they stumble across representatives of Elena Sanchez (Salma Hayek) with a business deal which they refuse. Elena's henchmen Lado (Benicio del Toro) kidnaps O which leads Ben and Chon to fight against Elena to rescue O.

The Positives:
I can easily say that this film is Oliver Stone's weakest. However, there are a few positives to it. As with most of Stone's films, the cinematography and camera work are really impressive. The shots of Laguna and California are visually striking and nice to watch.

I also like that this time Stone attempted to go back to his ultraviolet roots similar to Natural Born Killers. While there are surprisingly not a lot of action scenes in this film, the violence and action scenes are intense and well worth watching.

While this is Stone's weakest acting ensemble, there are a few bright spots. Benicio del Toro steals the show as Lado, he is a disturbed individual who likes to watch people suffer. With del Toro's talent, this is a character who we love to hate. John Travolta is barely in the film, but his scenes are really impressive to watch and his performance here is an enjoyable one.

The Negatives:
There are a lot of problems I had with Savages. For starters, the acting ensemble (with the exception of del Toro and Travolta) is horrendous. Taylor Kitsch is yet another horrible performance as Chon the pot-growing war veteran. With a better actor, this could have been a captivating character. Instead, we get a dull, emotionless, and boring character. Kitsch now has three bad performances in his resume this year, let's face it, the dude is a horrible actor and I hope Hollywood stops giving him roles. Hayek, Lively, and Johnson give awful and boring performances here as well, which is surprising since these are pretty good actors. It's obvious that Stone preferred the visuals over the acting ability for this film.

The story is very boring as well. The trailers made me to believe that this film would be a bloodbath about the war on drugs. Instead, we are treated to a uneven story about the drug business that would have been more interesting with a better script and characters that I could have cared for. This ends up being a lazy script that could have been so much more.

Stone could have also limited to the use of Blake Lively narrating the story. Sure, for the beginning and end, it would have been ok. However, there is narration at completely unnecessary points in the film that would have been explained just fine without narration.

One thing that really made me angry about the film is its ending (Potential Spoilers). The film should have been five minutes shorter. Instead, we are treated to two different endings. I thought the first one ended it perfectly. Stone throws a curveball at the audience and decides to confuse them with a dumber, less effective, and more confusing ending. Why he did this I am not sure, but he turned a mediocre film into a mess because of this decision.

Conclusion:
Savages is easily Oliver Stone's worst film in his filmography. Weak writing, awful performances, and terrible creative decisions ultimately overpower the few decent things that this film offered. This is far from the return to form from Oliver Stone I was expecting. I would skip this film in theaters, but if you are curious enough to see it, I would wait until it is on TV.

Rating: 2.5 out of 10