Savages (2012) Reviews

• Should have been a LOT better.

  tpaladino2012-07-08

  This was not a great movie. It could have been a great movie, but it was let down in two major ways. First off, two of the three lead characters are awful. Blake Lively makes for good eye candy, but she just isn't a good actress. She's not bad in smaller supporting roles (like her part in The Town), but she simply cannot carry a lead. Unfortunately the entire film basically revolves around her (and she narrates), so her shortcomings are brought front and center. Every time her voice-over came on, I cringed. It really was not a good choice. Taylor Kitsch is no better. Again... good eye candy, poor acting. Very poor acting. He just has no soul, and brings absolutely nothing to his character whatsoever. He should be in a brainless Fast & Furious movie playing opposite Vin Diesel, not an Oliver Stone drama. The second major failure of this film is even more serious, and that is the story structure. We are never really given the opportunity to understand why the three lead characters (Chon, Ben and Ophelia) have such strong feelings for each other. We're told that they do, but never given any real reason to believe it. This is extremely important, because literally the entire premise of the film hangs on their relationship. If you're going to build a dramatic story around an unorthodox three- way relationship, you had better explain in more than one quick scene exactly how this relationship happened, otherwise the audience won't know why they should care about the characters. Especially when the actors portraying these characters aren't very good to begin with. I know that I kept asking myself why these two guys share a girl, how they have absolutely zero jealousy, why they never once thought of double-crossing each other, and why either of them care so deeply for her -- to the point of being willing to risk their lives and commit horrible atrocities to save her. Where did all this love and loyalty come from? It was never adequately explained, and the entire movie suffers tremendously for it. On a slightly more positive note, the veteran actors did a fine job. Benicio Del Toro was wonderful as a psychotic cartel underboss, John Travolta chewed the scenery to bits, and Salma Hayek was entirely believable in her role as well. Unfortunately, their competence only served to underscore the incompetence of the younger leads. It's telling that the best scene in the entire film was between Del Toro and Travolta, with none of the three lead actors anywhere to be found, and hinted at the promise this movie squandered. A lot of reviews took issue with the violence portrayed in the film, but I didn't have a problem with that. You really can't make a movie about Mexican drug cartels without violence, so I didn't feel it was gratuitous. Unfortunately, however, it also didn't make the movie any more believable from a plot perspective. Overall, I just don't think this was a very good film. I don't think that Stone felt entirely comfortable with what he was doing here, trying at times to be Tarantino but failing miserably. And likewise, I think that if this film had been in the hands of Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez, it likely would have come out much better, perhaps even great.

• Please, just make the voice-over stop

  mattbaxter722012-09-25

  There are many bad things about this movie, but let's list the good things first. The plot makes sense, kind of. It's nicely shot, and the beach looked pretty. And... I guess John Travolta looked as though he was having fun? Which is more than I could say for the poor buggers who had to sit through this mess. Your two leads, ladies and gentlemen, are Aaron Johnson, last seen being upstaged by a preteen girl, and Taylor Kitsch, who Hollywood keeps casting as the lead in blockbusters which then tank spectacularly at the box office. You know why that is, Hollywood? It's because Taylor Kitsch has no charisma. None. The furniture was more interesting than he was, and had more emotional range. Even he's better than Johnson, a black hole of tedium from which nothing interesting can escape. These are two of the blandest leads I've ever seen, and I've seen movies that starred rappers. But dear God in heaven, they are much, much better than Blake Lively. I haven't seen much else of her acting, so I can only think she can do much better than this. But here she's playing a 30-year-old ingénue, a woman-child who knows Shakespeare but doesn't know what 'savages' means. She's meant to be sexy and alluring, but she comes across as so boundlessly stupid that no man could seriously find her attractive. I don't think that's her fault, but the no-nudity clause that made the sex scenes in this movie so absurd? Yeah, that was her fault. Even that isn't the worst. There's still... that voice-over. The narration that infests this whole movie, but especially the early scenes, is some of the worst writing I've ever heard. 'I had orgasms, he had wargasms' is a phrase that will live with me until I die. And now, even if you haven't seen the movie, it'll haunt your nightmares, too. You're welcome.

• Good Action Movie

  nemisis_02013-12-28

  Reading the reviews i'm not sure why people were expecting this movie to be like an Oscar winner or something? Going in I wasn't expecting it to be an Oscar winner, if you were expecting this movie to be about a Mexican cartel and not have violence in it then you know zero about Mexican cartels and that is an understatement. Funny thing was i was expecting this movie not to portray Mexican cartels in their real light, but after watching the movie, yup they are as ruthless as the movie portrays and glad Hollywood portrayed them like that instead of sugar coating the threat they pose to the world. If you are looking for a violent action movie based on an American drug ring vs a Mexican cartel well you probably have one of the better movies when it comes to that. If you are looking for gone with the wind, sound of the music or something like that best look else where. Me, I highly enjoyed the movie, it delivered better than i thought it was going to deliver. People will complain about the violence but again this is about a Mexican cartel, not the boy scouts. There is nothing i hate more than a movie that isn't true to it's roots, but this movie stays true to what Mexican cartels are all about when it comes to business.

• Truly awful...Oliver Stone what happened to you?

  erikjaded-417-8406352012-07-07

  I went to see 'Savages' today with a friend. The movie was truly a pathetic waste of celluloid and talent. The script seems to have been written with a crayon. Benicio del Toro and Selma Hayek are capable of much better than this dreck. Blake Lively was horribly weak and miscast as a poor little rich girl who is in love with two professional pot growers in California. The two guys live and share her with each other, all like a big happy family. Ridiculous. The only thing even remotely reminiscent of Oliver Stone's finer works is the realistic graphic violence (Platoon, Natural Born Killers). Unfortunately the violence is ham- handed and boring. SPOILER: At the very beginning of the movie the two protagonist pot-growing-buddies receive a video message warning from the South American cartel headed by Selma Hayek's character. The video is so shocking, so disturbingly violent, that how the main characters react to it is completely non-believable. Attached to the video is a place and time the cartel wants to meet the expert growing duo the next day to force them into a contract with the cartel.---Any normal person receiving this video warning would disappear/pack up and flea immediately. But no, instead the guys chill out, smoke pot, and have sex until the next day as if their lives aren't in mortal danger...this is just one of the major weaknesses in the plot. Emile Hirsch is completely underused as a bicycling expert computer hacker who is capable of hacking into the credit card companies and international bank accounts of the cartel; he would have been better cast as one of the two main male characters. John Travolta phones in a lackluster performance as a crooked DEA agent who just happens to have a wife dying from cancer. Whenever he brings her up (we never see her) he is always lighthearted and smiling; he might as well be discussing his golf handicap... The ending seems to have been decided "by committee." Seems like the studio couldn't figure out how the movie should end so they give us two endings; the film literally rewinds and shows the second, alternate ending....just pathetically bad. There were audible groans from the audience... The movie is 2 hours 15 minutes; could have been trimmed by a half hour or more... The plot is a train wreck; Oliver Stone said in a recent interview about the film that the book this is based on had 120 different scenes; he trimmed that down to 30. He said he was more inspired by rather than actually trying for a faithful adaption. This is a real tragedy and the movie suffers for it. Mr. Stone basically was too lazy to get it right; this movie could have been a classic like the Pacino/De Niro masterpiece, Heat. This is too bad as the source book material for 'Savages' is highly regarded. Truly a bad, poorly written movie. Stupid and logic-defying. I was excited to see this; I was hoping for a Pulp Fiction/Natural Born Killers vibe (that's what the preview falsely promises). This is Oliver Stone's low point; he can only go up from here. Please don't waste your time, energy, or money on this bloated, overlong, waste of talent, piece of crap. A true raspberry. Insulting to fans that have come to expect realistic and compelling films from Mr. Stone. There are lapses in logic within this film that are worse than cheap 'Friday the 13th' films; things that no rational human being who values their safety/life would ever do. And this is inexcusable as this movie portends to be a serious and realistic tale. 'Lethal Weapon' is more plausible. So is 'The Dark Knight.' 'Savages' plays like a cheap, second-tier comic book of a film. Putrid and sad. On a positive note, my friend and I had a pretty entertaining discussion on the way home from the theater discussing the colossal absurdity of what we had just sat through...I wish I could say 'this movie was so bad it's good.' Unfortunately it's just plain BAD. Very disappointing.

• Absolutely awful.

  tubamonkey092012-07-10

  Oliver Stone has a reputation of excellent film making (Natural Born Killers, Platoon), but what I saw in the movie theater last night was easily one of the worst films I've ever seen in my entire life. First the characters are two dimensional. The two male leads are introduced as basically "the tough guy" and the "sensitive guy". Their performances were mediocre at best. Taylor Klitsch was dry and brought nothing special to the role. The female lead "O" (Blake Lively) seems to have nothing particularly interesting about her, and her voice narrating makes the sound of a root canal suddenly more appetizing. Stone wants the audience to view these three characters as heroes, but I don't see it. The characters don't do anything significant they just grow weed, smoke weed, and have sex. Stone tries to get the audience on our side when he presents the benefits of marijuana but instead it comes across as 20-30 minutes of "legalize" propaganda followed by 10 minutes of renewable energy information. Speaking of propaganda, the political and social themes in this movie are about as subtle as prison rape. It seems that instead of making a film about a group of people who live an alternative lifestyle, Stone has created a film about alternative lifestyles featuring some people. Blake Lively narrates a sort of montage of the marijuana industry, where all the minor characters are young, wealthy, and attractive, not to mention that marijuana is portrayed as a lifestyle, dare I say religion. Was this movie supposed to be realistic at some point? I don't know if I should have been eating popcorn in the theater or weaving a hemp bracelet. AHHH but the trailer has guns! It features violence! Well... sort of.... just when you think the movie will redeem itself with some guns blazing action it simply doesn't deliver on this either. There are a few explosions that any high-schooler with an M-80 could pull off in their garage, some CGI blood, and the only good violent scene is so late in the movie that the audience doesn't react. I don't understand where these millions of dollars went because they weren't in this movie, either Oliver Stone is a terrible film maker or an awesome crook. Terrible acting, terrible action, terrible script, absolutely TERRIBLE. Save yourself the aggravation and skip this movie. I haven't been this upset with cinema since Bill Murray did Garfield. I feel so strongly about this film that I will never spend my money on another Oliver Stone movie ever again.