Savages (2012)

Based on a novel of the same name, Savages tells the story of two men who run a “clean” drug dealing business, but who want out. Partly because they want to spend more time with their mutual girlfriend, but also because they don’t want to have to deal with the “Wal-Mart” of business, run by a rather mixed-up woman played by Salma Hayek, who is trying to buy them out. When the guys agree to sell, but refuse to stay on board, she retaliates by kidnapping the girlfriend. There’s also some other complicated stuff involving Benicio del Toro who plays the second-in-command of the big drug operation, but who is ratting out to John Travolta’s corrupt federal agent.

The movie is good because I was able to keep attention enough to remember all that. It really is an interesting piece of work. Oliver Stone returns to form to an extent, a dark, breezy, hyper-violent form. Not quite as eccentric as Natural Born Killers, but certainly just as flashy. This is purely an exercise in razzmatazz. The story is made slightly complicated by the rush of the pacing, but kept interesting by the flash of the editing. I almost get the impression that Stone doesn’t think the material is interesting enough on its own to get by without all the theatrics. In a way, he’s right. If you peel away all the layers of fancy direction, there isn’t actually anything underneath. The story is extremely cut and paste and doesn’t really warrant a movie on its own, which is why the fact that it has been disguised so effectively somehow makes it enjoyable. It’s all a big mixed bag. Past that, there are good and bad things. Hayek and del Toro are great performers and give the movie a lot of its life, but the three main stars, whose names I can’t even remember, are sort of bland. I also didn’t like the points where the movie gets a little too lost in itself, like the fact that there are two endings, one a time-wasting fake.

So, what we have is a bad movie that manages to get away with being good entertainment. Stone has been around long enough to know what buttons to push to stimulate his audience, and he does seem confident that his latest movie will fly well enough after doing so. That means, though, that he has basically left the movie on auto-pilot. It is one of those movies that seems good enough in the moment, but which leaves no impact whatever. All in all, it is passable; simply good enough.

By the way, does it seem curious to anyone else that nobody seems upset by the blatant support of illegal drugs in so many movies. This one in particular approaches the subject as if there was no question of morality, just opportunity for adventure. I guess filmmakers assume that enough people do it to ignore  the legality. Movies have such an impact on the world that I can see movies like this pointing certain people towards drug use, and possibly even higher people towards law-changing.

7/10