It's been a while since Oliver Stone has made a really off-the-wall film, and while Savages isn’t quite up there with Natural Born Killers (it’s closer to U-Turn), it’s a big departure from the director who gave us Wall Street; Money Never Sleeps and W.
Based on a surf-noir novel by Don Winslow, it’s the tale of O (Blake Lively) a hippie surfer girl who’s the gal in a dude-heavy threesome: Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is an army vet who sees violence as the solution to most problems, Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is the brains of the outfit, O is the girl they’re both sleeping with and together they’re one big happy family who just happen to make a living growing high-class marijuana in California.
Bad news for them is, the local Mexican cartel is looking to expand their brand, and absorbing the trio's business is a major part of their strategy. Cartel tough guy Lado (Benicio Del Toro) wants to get tough; cartel boss Elena (Salma Hayek) is a little more subtle; DEA agent Dennis (a wigless John Travolta) reckons the trio should just sell up and move on.
Stone's direction is high on energy and the story has potential, but there’s one problem: every character here has all the depth of a layer of paint. O’s narration rapidly becomes painful and our three leads are the kind of all-surface “badass” characters it’s extremely difficult to connect with, let alone care about.
The bad guys have a little more going for them – Elena has two whole sides to her (mob boss and doting mother), which is why Hayek gives the best performance in the film – but with dull characters and a story this thin the whole thing rapidly becomes a chore to watch.
Stone's focus on surface flash adds nothing to proceedings, and while he can still put together a decent scene when he feels like it – most of the violence is well handled, mostly because at least there something is happening – his interests largely lie elsewhere.
Then towards the end Savages pulls a plot rewind - it shows dramatic events that influence the story, then basically says "nah, that didn't really happen, I just thought it'd be cool" – that destroys what little goodwill the film had going for it.
It's one thing to be flashy at the expense of storytelling: when you all but mock the audience for caring how things turn out, just go make music videos instead.
2 out of 5
Savages Australian release: 18th October, 2012 Official Site:Savages Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demian Bichir Director: Oliver Stone
