Savages (2011)

Synopsis: Laguna Beach, California: Ben (Aaron Taylor Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) enjoy a glorious lifestyle. They share a beautiful girl Ophelia (Blake Lively), known as O, and make truckloads of money by growing and selling some of the best marijuana in town.  But when they receive a nasty video showing some guys being demolished with a chainsaw, they realise it is an ultimatum to share their thriving business with a particularly nasty Mexican Baja drug cartel.

Let’s face it, Oliver Stone has done some pretty fine directing in his time, so my hopes were high for his latest effort. But whilst Savages is a slickly directed, well-acted and engaging thriller, it is so violent and nasty, with a couple of plot points that just don’t seem to work, that it’s not going to rank highly amongst my favourite Oliver Stone films.

Typically of Stone there is an attempt at injecting some moral ambiguity into the plot and so lift it beyond the standard drug gang film. Firstly, Ben and Chon aren’t your usual low-life drug dealers. Ben is a pacifist and a greenie, and perceives himself as providing a great service, especially by supplying high grade dope for medical purposes. Chon is an ex Navy SEAL, who brought the quality dope seeds back from Iraq. He knows about the uglier side of life, but at heart he’s a decent bloke. Both of them love O, share her favours, and the trio seem to have it made. They perceive the Mexican cartel members as nothing more than savages. The Mexicans, ironically, see the trio’s unfamiliar sexual arrangement as something also approaching the realms of savagery.

The leaders of the Baja Cartel are, unusually, a woman, Elena (Selma Hayek) and her chief henchman, Lado (a wondrously wicked and repulsive Benicio Del Toro). Elena with her paradoxically softer side is not entirely what one would expect of such a crime boss, but Lado is even worse than one would imagine. Add to the mix one super-corrupt cop (John Travolta) and you have a volatile set of ingredients.

The camera work has a restless energy and is elegant, and there are several scenes of high tension but certain scenes of highly unlikely relationships grate, whilst others of sadistic cruelty feel exploitative. The near-ending takes the well-known “hostages handover in the desert” scenario and turns it on its head, but in a way that stretches the bounds of credulity. The real ending was a bit of a mystery to me, but felt like a somewhat self-conscious attempt to neatly tie things up, or, thanks to the final voice-over from O, to leave us thinking that the film has more substance than it actually has.

Sure, the drug wars situation in Mexico is a real social problem, but I think films like Soderbergh’s Traffic (in which Del Toro starred) dealt with these issues so much better. Savages can’t seem to decide if it wants to titillate, shock, or tell a vaguely moralistic tale. The film will no doubt please die-hard Stone aficionadi, or those wanting to wallow in blood and cruelty. Others should perhaps look elsewhere.  

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