Savages is Oliver Stone’s attempt to remake the war-on-drugs thriller for the young-and-talented generation, and it mostly fails. The film follows two pot growers, Chon and Ben, who face off against the Mexican cartel that kidnaps their shared girlfriend, Ophelia. It is loud, gory, and mostly empty.
The premise is simple: two friends grow weed in Laguna Beach, get rich, and attract the wrong kind of attention. When the cartel shows up with severed heads and a chainsaw, the pair have to choose between running and fighting. That tension never quite lands.
Trailer, via Cieon Movies.
The Two Leads
Taylor Kitsch plays Chon, an ex-Navy SEAL, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Ben, a UC Berkeley graduate in business and botany. Both actors are handsome enough, but neither sells the stakes. Their friendship feels thin, and their fear of the cartel feels forced.
Blake Lively plays Ophelia Sage. She is supposed to be the glue holding the pair together, but the script treats her as a prize to be fought over rather than a person. Her kidnapping is the engine of the plot, and yet the film spends almost no time with her once she is gone.
Salma Hayek Pinault plays Elena, the cartel leader who demands a partnership. She is the best thing in the movie, a cold, calculating force that the script cannot match. Benicio del Toro plays Lado, the cartel’s enforcer, and he is fine, but his scenes are mostly about violence rather than menace.
John Travolta plays Dennis, a corrupt DEA agent who takes money from the pair. His role is meant to be a moral compass, but he is too cartoonish to work.
The Violence
The violence is the film’s main selling point. There are severed heads, a chainsaw, and a kidnapping scene that is genuinely unpleasant to watch. But the film never explains why any of it matters. The cartel is cruel, yes, but the cruelty is background music rather than a reason to care.
The action scenes are busy, with cars exploding and guns firing. But they lack weight. A sequence where Chon and Ben attack a cartel money convoy and kill seven of Elena’s men is meant to be shocking. It is not.
The Romance
The love triangle is the film’s biggest weakness. Chon and Ben are both in love with Ophelia, but the film never explores what that means. Their devotion is stated, not shown. When Ophelia is kidnapped, the film cuts away from her and shows the men arguing about what to do. It is a strange choice for a movie built around her capture.
“Young. Beautiful. Deadly.”
That is the film’s tagline. It promises a story about youth and beauty and danger. What it delivers is a story about two men who cannot decide what to do with a woman they both want.
The Bottom Line
Savages is a mess. It has a good cast and a promising setup, but the script never figures out what it wants to be. It is a crime thriller, a drama, and a revenge picture, all at once, and none of them work.
The film’s runtime is 131 minutes, and it drags in the middle. The pacing is uneven, with long stretches of exposition followed by sudden bursts of violence. The film is also violent, but the violence is hollow. It is meant to be shocking, but it is just noise.
The film was released by Universal Pictures on July 6, 2012. It grossed $83 million worldwide on a $45 million budget. Those numbers are modest, and they reflect the film’s failure to connect with audiences.
Savages is a film that wanted to be a classic of its genre. Instead, it is a forgettable entry in a long line of forgettable films. It is not worth your time.
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