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Sunday, July 29, 2012
MOVIE REVIEW
Savages
Foxes, Wolves And An
Empire Of Blood
Salma Hayek as Elena and Blake Lively as Ophelia in Oliver Stone's crime drama "Savages".
Universal Pictures
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Sunday, July 29,
2012
Feral, ferocious, hypnotic and
seductive,
Oliver Stone's "Savages" stands more as a cartoonish satire of the
current state of America's drug "war" than a serious look at the devastation of
the fight over drugs. Drawn on a "Scarface" operatic yet micro scale
playing field via drug-dealing, marijuana-using suppliers Chon (Taylor Kitsch,
"John Carter",
"Battleship") and Ben (Aaron Johnson,
"Kick-Ass",
"Nowhere Boy"), "Savages" is intense, brutal and bloody. Chon (John) and
Ben are best friends who share a blonde girlfriend named Ophelia, aka O (Blake
Lively) in the sunny, warm climes of Laguna Beach, California. "They must
love each other more than they love you, otherwise how could they share you,"
ruthless Mexican drug lord Elena (Salma
Hayek) tells O.
Narrated by O in the same way a female voice narrated parts of Mr. Stone's
"Heaven And Earth" roughly 20 years ago, "Savages" combines the fierce opera of
"Scarface" with the comic absurdity and violence of "Natural Born Killers".
Mr. Stone's new crime drama-romance opened this month and boasts strong
performances from Ms. Hayek and especially
Benicio Del
Toro as Lado, Elena's rough-trade henchman who has self-interest at
heart. O, the biggest drug that the two male gringo "Laguna-ites" share,
is kidnapped. Chon and Ben, reluctant to share their lucrative drug
enterprise with Elena and dapper lawyer Alex (Demián
Bichir,
"A Better Life"), outline a plan to get out of
the deal with Elena and rescue O.
"Savages" is about a primal drive -- that of keeping family intact as well as
the overall need to control, preserve and protect the precious things we have
and aspire to hold on to as human beings. Elena has been thrust into her
nasty line of work by death itself, and doesn't want her daughter Magda (Sandra
Echevarría) falling prey to the same. O has never had a family but finds
one with the two boyish father figures in her life. "Savages" works best
when Ms. Hayek and Ms. Lively are together, and the serenity of their scenes
dovetails with the tempo of the spiritual-like, if occasionally off-putting and
pretentious narration. There's peace, emotion and understanding between
these two ladies on divided sides of the drugs border. Mr. Stone's
otherwise engaging and absorbing film loses something when Mr. Kitsch, Mr.
Johnson and Emile Hirsch (as a computer whiz and hacking genius) are onscreen.
By contrast "Savages" flourishes when Mr. Del Toro, Ms. Hayek and Mr. Bichir are
on screen. They all look and feel much more comfortable with the material
written by Mr. Stone, Shane Salerno and Don Winslow (based on Mr. Winslow's
novel) than the American-born actors do. I'm not sure if that's because
the characters that the latter actors play all have higher stakes in the story
or because the director orchestrates the film in such a way that their plights
are more demanding (and they are.) It may be a bit of both, or just that
the aforementioned trio of Puerto Rican and Mexican-born actors are just
flat-out better at their daytime jobs (and they are.)
Meanwhile Dennis (John Travolta), a federal drug enforcement agent and key point
man for Chon and Ben, also has a fractured family: a daughter and
cancer-stricken wife on her last legs. He and others on this wacky stage
are driven by impulse and expediency, having to act out and play the role of
someone other than their true selves to get what they want. It's a game no
one wins -- they just endure or repeat it. Throughout "Savages" there's
constant masking and unmasking, as well as self-delusion and deception amongst
and within all the players, and the way Mr. Stone canvasses and represents this
(via lush and sometimes lurid cinematography by Daniel Mindel) is beautiful,
smart and thorough.
Each of the key characters are foxes or wolves. Their animal drives kick
in, either out of desperation or out of an urgent need to whet their appetites.
Whether it's sex -- which the director gets out of the way early on -- or
through violence, or eating, there's an aggression and obsession in these acts
that is overtly animalistic. Watch for a scene where Lado carves up steak
on a plate and feeds pieces of it to O. The suspense of their interaction
is powerful.
Unlike Steven
Soderbergh's "Traffic", which also starred Mr. Del Toro, "Savages"
spends a fair bit of time in Mexico and has a few intentionally sarcastic and
cynical thoughts about Native Americans. Behind these thoughts for me lay
the greed, hunger and opportunistic taking by force and savage violence of
America itself by Europeans, and I couldn't help but think that Chon and Ben
were somehow in their own very small way -- even unbeknownst to them --
reenacting this savagery in a reverse sense on a minor scale by rescuing O, the
symbolic and celebrated pedestal object of the new America (a metaphoric Lady
Liberty), albeit in the film the lady in question is blonde-haired with eyes
wide open (although like Lady Liberty herself, O is blindfolded at one point.)
In "Savages", which could be a look at the American Scheme not the American
Dream, it's every one for his or herself. "There are no teammates," as the
artist Pink once sang. Mr. Stone, a thought-provoking director who hits
his stride with this clever, colorful and bloody paradise, never sells us short
in that notion or any others with this appealing drama.
Also with: Antonio Jaramillo, Joaquín Cosio, Leonard Roberts, Amber Dixon
Brenner, Joel David Moore, Mia Maestro, Sean Stone, Tara Stone.
"Savages" is rated
R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for strong brutal and grisly
violence, some graphic sexuality, nudity, drug
use and language throughout. In English and occasional Spanish with
English language subtitles. The film's running time is two hours
and eleven minutes.
COPYRIGHT 2012. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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