Thursday, November 8, 2012

Movie Review: Savages (2012) Dir. Oliver Stone


Savages by Oliver Stone
2 out of 5 stars

Blurb: Part-time environmentalist and philanthropist Ben and his ex-mercenary buddy Chon run a Laguna Beach–based marijuana operation, now the Mexican Baja Cartel wants in, and sends them the message that a "no" is unacceptable. When they refuse to back down, the cartel escalates its threat, kidnapping Ophelia, the boys’ playmate and confidante. O’s abduction sets off negotiations and plot twists as Ben and Chon look for a way to come out on top.

Thoughts: Oliver Stone has taken a fantastic, short, adreneline fuelled piece of modern noir writing and made a slow, messy, overly long movie about the war on drugs. For a film the length of Traffic this has 1/10th the substance and none of the style. It took me less time to read the book than it did to watch the movie.

There were very few good things about this movie; Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro are the only people to come out of it with any kind of credibility, these actors deserved a better movie to perform in, that's for sure. Benicio Del Toro is never bad, he even made a Halle Berry movie watchable but Salma Hayek on the other hand has a history of mediocre performances in good movies and appearing in movies she really shouldn't have because they suck. This time the movie sucked but she was better than I remember seeing her in an English speaking role. Does The Faculty count?


The long list of complaints has to start with Blake Lively, a truly terrible actor; she narrates this film yet she can hardly speak words, everything about her casting was wrong and if I never see her in a film ever again it will be too soon.

More of a concern was that there was no sign that Oliver Stone was actually awake during the production of this movie. When I think back to some of his classic films they all have a lot of style and a very particular style at that but with Savages there was nothing, just a standard collection of shots cut together in a boring way. This was the man who made Tom Cruise watchable in Born on the Fourth of July, hell, this man made Natural Born Killers and Platoon, he may have made a movie about Dubya but I never expected anything quite this stupid. Perhaps it's time he retired?

And let's not forget the ending! Oh my gosh the ending took the movie to whole new depths of awful. Some people may not have been satisfied with the ending of the novel but I liked its ambiguity and more importantly the more explicit nature of it seemed to work in the movie as far as the awful acting of the three leads would allow it and yet, AND YET! She woke up in the shower and remembered a dream in which JR was dead. Total copout, I expected more from Oliver Stone and Don Winslow but I should have known better it seems, this is Hollywood afterall.

Dear Don Winslow, now that you have achieved a level of success and acknowledgement of your talent, the next time one of your excellent books is adapted in to a movie please retain some control over the material as this film could easily have killed your movie career. I know it must have been hard after all of the support Oliver Stone gave you and all that money floating around but even so, you know? At least it wasn't the fault of your script. Thank you, the end.



Go ahead tell me what was actually good about this film. I know it wasn't as bad as Total Recall 2012 or Amazing Spider-Man but that's not a good enough reason to like it I'm afraid, Im going to need a structured argument in defence of this abomination.

The blahblahblahgay book review of Savages by Don Winslow

Reviews from some of my favourite bloggers:
FrontRoomCinema
The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World
And So It Begins...
Cinema Viewfinder

Additional viewing:
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
Traffic
Alpha Dog


Additional reading:
The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
Two-Way Split by Allan Guthrie

16 comments:

  1. Oliver Stone has been sucking ass since Alexander. The guy has clearly lost his touch and each feature film after another is just bad. I agree, it's time for him to retire. He has nothing to prove anymore.

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    1. Reading around there's been suggestion that he no longer has the studio support he once had and has had to tone his films down. If that's the case I'd suggest something other than retirement, taking the independent route. If William Friedkin can get Killer Joe made for $10m then Stone should be able to give his creative juices a bit of a boost by working outside of the mainstream. Otherwise he's verging on Coppola territory, next up a John Grisham adaptation?

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  2. Thanks for saving me from watching this. Guess I should give the book a read instead.

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    1. If you missed it, the book was reviewed yesterday in one of my rare all singing all dancing praise sessions for a piece of media.

      I'm not sure any amount of bad reviews could have gotten me to skip watching this one, being a fan of the book and all, but yeah if you just have a passing interest really just don't bother.

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  3. Savages was ruined from the moment Lively said Kitsch was as cold as a rock and Johnson was hot like the earth... what. Hayek and Del Toro were pretty great, and I'm also a fan of Johnson's work, though that character, dear god...

    I've never read the book, but I actually believed the fake ending. Because, you know, the whole film was so ridiculous that an ending like that would be no surprise. And why did everyone have to be killed, raped, or forced to burn someone to death? Ludicrous.

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    1. Part of the issue with Lively's narration is that it was her reading of it but the other part was that some things cannot translate from novel to movie I think. There were lines throughout that I groaned at but I think quite a few of them worked in the book. With a stronger actress they wouldn't have felt so obviously cliche.

      I don't think everyone had to kill someone but it certainly felt that way with the approach Stone took towards the material. I personally enjoyed Natural Born Killers and there's a wole lot of unnecessary death in that movie but it's not wholesale mess like with Savages, it serves a clear purpose of one kind or another.

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  4. Thanks for the link dude! I'm actually surprised you think we disagree about this flick. Yeah, I like Lively more than you, but I found the movie to be as tired and mediocre as you, no doubt. Del Toro was great, but what of it?

    Nice review man.

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    1. I know, there'll come a time when Del Toro isn't great in a movie and we'll wonder if he's lost it. Not for a good few more years yet I hope.

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  5. I've absolutely no structured argument for my 3/4 rating of this film. Last year, I loved The Rum Diary, and this reminded me of that. It was sloppy and all over the place, yet I liked the messiness of it. But that's just me...

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    1. Don't be offended Josh. I'm just an old cynic these days :D

      Messiness as in the plot was meandering or messy as in the chainsaws and guns? I quite like the idea behind both of them but there were too many things that detracted for me - see Lively and the fact that it should have been a race not a gentle job through the story.

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    2. Haha. No offense taken. :)

      Messiness as in the plot was meandering. Both of those films just seem to revel in that, and I kinda dig it.

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    3. In discussing with Alex I realised that U Turn was a meandering mess that worked very well. How much of the Stone back catalogue have you seen? If you haven't yet seen Sean Penn and a whole host of weird and wonderful supporting actors you're in for a treat.

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    4. I haven't seen Any Given Sunday, Nixon, The Doors, or Talk Radio. Also, I haven't seen U Turn yet, but it's on my watchlist. Glad I'm prepared now. ;)

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    5. That's not too many missing then. Any Given Sunday is very Stone, I enjoyed it quite a lot at the time, not sure how it will have aged. The thing that always bugged me was that they had to create an entire sport because NFL wouldn't endorse it and there were a lot holes etc that detracted from the gritty realism.

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  6. I haven't seen this movie yet. Based from your review, I will definitely watch this once it will release here in the Phils.

    Keep it up dude.

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    1. Either you are a nice spammer or you just love bad movies. I'll happily suggest a whole host of awful films to watch whilst you wait for Savages to come out if you're the latter. If you're the former I suggest jogging on.

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