Savages represents a departure for Oliver Stone in many ways. Gone are the preachy monologues and non-too subtle political point scoring. Instead, we have a rather enjoyable drug film about a group of relaxed hipsters revelling in a paradise of weed, sun and threesomes. However, once the Cartel get involved, things inevitably get a little more complicated.
The film has clearly borrowed a great deal from the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ with the weed being ‘the best there is’ and having drug makers totally out of their depth yet somehow surviving the many attempts on their life. It even shares a similar tone, with elements of black comedy quite common during the action. Where it fails to capture Breaking Bad’s genius, however, is that the characters simply aren’t as interesting, with the three leads falling into stereotype. Taylor Kitsch plays an Afghanistan war veteran who took the marijuana seeds home with him. Kitsch plays him with a stone-faced tenacity but never succeeds in adding much depth to the character so you care for him. The awkward voiceover didn’t help with this either. The narration included the unbearably cringe worthy line delivered by Blake Lively of “I had orgasms; he had wargasms.”
Blake Lively is a member of the ‘I-speak-croakily-to-show-I’m-vulnerable’ acting school and with her skimmed milk voice providing unnecessary narration taxing my patience, it is difficult to warm to her character. She has two boyfriends in Kitsch and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and swears she ‘loves them both equally’. The subplot of her having a neglectful mother was never explored to its full potential and this three-way thing is pretty much the most interesting thing about her. The relationship is clearly meant to be a controversial comment on monogamy but, in this day and age, it isn’t very shocking and just serves to confuse the audience over what drove the characters to come to this arrangement in the first place, as it is never properly explained.
Taylor-Johnson is a very promising actor and it’s a shame he just plays a character we’ve seen many times before, a peaceful hippie, as he’s very able. The dynamic between him and Kitsch was interesting. They’re like yin and yang but there was a powerful chemistry there that is a credit to the actors involved. The standout performance for me, though, was Benicio Del Toro playing a Cartel psycho. He has a great deal of charisma that he puts to good use in the tense exchanges with his adversaries. Added to that, his unpredictable nature and habit of extreme violence meant his scenes were looked forward to during the comparably dull scenes involving the weed growers.
Oliver Stone, with all his experience, generally handles the complex script quite well. It is structured in the same vain as ‘Goodfellas’ with scenes usually separated by montage scenes accompanied by a voiceover. Though the voiceover was rather lazy writing, the film was paced beautifully and the two-hour plus running time never felt as long as it was. However, Stone can’t resist adding stupid cinematic tricks seemingly just to show off. The ending involves a bizarre use of a rewind that had the entire cinema groaning and the first line in the film of “just because I’m telling you this story… doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end of it”, which just doesn’t really work and comes across as trying to gain the audience’s attention in a crass manner.
Savages is worth seeing, simply because it is a great deal of fun. The storytelling problems never get in the way of Stone being able to tell an interesting story that achieves its basic aims. While we all suffer through the worst flooding in decades, it’s nice seeing a fun film set in a beautiful location that promotes the undomesticated, easy-going life of a savage.