Too much of everything

Some things I liked some I did not.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

'Savages' is a thoroughly unlikeable film with a poor plot, weak script and some seriously bad acting. From the opening scene alone I got the impression that this was going to be yet another pretentious piece of garbage, and I was right.The narration is highly annoying, as are virtually all of the characters. It's more of a comedy than a thriller and it can be especially difficult to take Blake Lively's acting seriously. There's a few decent action scenes but that's as far as the positives go as far as I'm concerned. I hated everything else about this film.

Twenty years ago an Oliver Stone film would be an event but the director has become wayward of late.This marks a return to form but it revisits his screenplay of Scarface too much in places aided with his kinetic camera work and filming style used in Natural Born Killers but here it hinders the flow.Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is peace loving hippy Buddhist and his best buddy Chon (Taylor Kitsch) a former soldier have developed the best type of marijuana which have made them successful in southern California.Both also share the same woman Ophelia (Blake Lively) and life is going swimmingly until the Mexican Baja Cartel demands that they join forces with them and later kidnap Ophelia.The cartel is ruthlessly led by Elena (Salma Hayek) her brutal enforcer Lado (Benicio Del Toro) wants Elena but also realises he needs to make his own moves.Ben and Chon realise they need to take on the cartel and free Ophelia and they can only do this with the help of the slippery and crooked DEA agent (John Travolta) a man who has worked out all the angles.The film is hampered by the constant narration by Lively as well as her performance which is less than lively. She certainly looks like someone who enchant two best friends but she can never mesmerise the audience.Kitsch's character is one dimensional, just a gung ho grunt which leaves Johnson to make up for the shortcomings of the two main leads. At least his character is more subtle learning the hard way that being involved in the drugs trade does not go hand in hand with being a peace loving beatnik. He has to toughen up and gets his hands bloody.The film works mainly because of the supporting actors. Hayek, Travolta (with his natural balding hairline) Bichir and Del Toro make the most of their thin characterisations, people who are rooted to their families despite being savages.Stone makes up for the rest with his filming style with an operatic approach to violence but why were we presented with an alternate version of the climax?

"Savages" has very little that is profound to say about both drugs and the narcotics trade, save that they can land you in a lot of trouble and that its universes are inhabited by some very dangerous people. The film is fast, loose and kinetic; its runtime clocks in at over two hours, despite not feeling like it. It is extraordinarily visceral and wallows in postmodernism to the extent that cathartic events towards the end are quite literally rewound by the narrator so as to depict them in a different way. It is also somewhat of a generic film – at one point, a character utters a ridiculously clichéd line along the lines of "smoke that....", before dropping an f-bomb and making an impossible shot with a scoped rifle unrealistic to the circumstances.Quite, this is not for the crowd that enjoyed "Traffic" – its multi-stranded nature; insistence on dipping in and out of a varied glut of characters' fates and very airy, almost dreamlike aesthetic, as the camera waves in and out of compositions and has fun with focus and depth of field to put across a sense of feeling to the audience, is about all it has in common with said film."Savages" is told from the perspective of Blake Lively's Ofelia, whose name is abridged to merely "O" and who spends most of the time away from the very people whose actions she is telling us about and the places within which these things happen. She lives in Laguna Beach, California, with Chon (Kitsch) and Ben (Taylor-Johnson) – two young-ish men who are to the local marijuana trade what Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were to computers and microchips. We are told Shaun fought in the Middle East, and buries his scars with weed and blunt sexual intercourse with O, but this is not revisited. Both he and his dreadlocked accomplice, we sense, are too young to be competent enough to be running the operation (which extends as far as Africa and South East Asia) they do. They unrealistically possess access to a "Bourne"-like command centre; maintain an uneasy relationship with John Travolta's DEA agent and have an endless supply of cannabis.O's background sees her, like so many people who get into marijuana, come from a family made broken by the lack of a father figure – something which saw her tumble out into the Californian counter culture and into a universe of hedonism and self-gratification. The abruptness of her name derives from a hatred of high-culture; reading and intellect, something synonymous with her type, in that it derives from a William Shakespeare text, and that cannot be tolerated... At one point, Shaun perfectly sums up the three's philosophy when he reminds Ben: "You were dead the second you were born." "Welcome to paradise" O tells us as things open, but we then witness the threesome proceed to dull their brains and numb their senses through smoking in order to pass the time - in spite of living under the roaring sun; on a fabulous beach and with more than enough recreation in the form of cycling; surfing and otherwise to fill their hours. We have all frequented places that offer these things, at least once in our lifetimes, either in the capacity of holiday makers or otherwise – at no point, as we occupied these places of such beauty, did it occur to us that stupefying our minds with illicit substances might be rather a good idea.The trio are so good at what they do, although we are unsure as to O's actual purpose, that they attract the attention of a bigger, broader Mexican cartel based just south of the border going through its own fiscal problems. Offering to move in and thus soak up some of the action, the gang, run by Selma Hayek, are aghast when Ben and Shaun say "no" – something which kicks off the kidnapping of O and forces the two supporting males into a spiral of blood; guts; guns and grief. But much of this has the film sound as if it is better than it is.For what it is, "Savages" is bouncy and energetic, and it involves us enough to want to observe as to where things venture. Oliver Stone, a versatile and often very impressive director, has essentially made the Mexico-United States border narcotics thriller for this generation: the Skype calls; the keyboard warfare and the sub-Call of Duty sniper fights. The characters are young and hip – the expert on the hacking and computer data side of things even looks as if he fell out of an episode of "The O.C." When the time comes to see two stalwarts such as Travolta and del Toro share the screen, in what is a fairly intense dialogue-driven sequence, it feels as if Stone is pausing in order to provide those who can remember a little further back with a moment for themselves.And so we come away from the film unable to either love or hate it – it would not be a misstep to recommend it, but to place it against some of Stone's other work and other films on the subject matter would be a mistake. Where "Savages" ends up, that is to say what propels its final act in the form of a counter-kidnap, might very well have occurred at the hour mark is the best exemplar of its structural problems. Films big in both scope and scale of the contemporary crime thriller sort, as two sides appear to constantly rub one another the wrong way, often have the potential to be truly memorable: "Heat" and "The Usual Suspects" taught us that. "Savages" is not one of these instances, but that is not to say it is of no worth.

Oliver Stone, the amazing director behind the Vietnam War flicks Platoon (1986), Born on The Fourth of July (1989), and Heaven & Earth (1993), makes a credible return on his dark, gritty film style with this violent, grim crime-thriller showing a bleak portrayal of international drug exchanging set on the sun-soaked side of southern California. Aaron Johnson plays Ben, a soft and peace-loving entrepreneur who owns a pot-growing business, selling some of best marijuana in the world, with his best friend Chon (played by Taylor Kitsch), a former NAVY seal veteran with a less merciful and more ruthless character who is often involved in violent confrontations against drug lords, unlike Ben prefers to live a life without violence and brutality. These two share a smoking, hot girlfriend named O a.k.a Ophelia (played by Blake Lively). However, when the two receive a business offer from a sadistic Mexican drug lord Lado (played by Benicio Del Toro) and his partner Elena (played by Salma Hayek), O is kidnapped and held hostage by Lado and his henchman. Ben and Chon must come with the money to save her from the vicious drug cartel, with the help of a corrupt DEA agent Denis (played by John Travolta).This movie doesn't quite hike up the peak of Oliver Stone's previous films, but its still entertaining as it needs to be; despite some of its flaws. With this film set in a coastal city of Laguna Beach, California, the cinematography uses some very high saturation to give the environment a sharp, colorful look. The plot is starts off a pretty solid note as we are introduced the backgrounds of the main characters Ben and Chon with Blake Lively's character's narration, including the story of Chon acquired the seeds to grow the marijuana plants. After that, the development of the characters stops there. While the plot moves pretty well more most of the first half, it eventually descends into an inconsistent mess in the second half. From there on, the story leaves a few plot holes here and there. However, the film still manages to be compelling and gritty in a way that still keeps the plot going. As the film goes on, it gets darker and more sinister, and progresses into a very mean atmosphere. With their girlfriend held hostage, the main characters get involved gunfights against cartel members that get quite bloody and gruesome at times. There is also a horrifying torture scene with some grisly results. So the film can does a bit brutal and tough to watch, but is still entertaining for the least.Savages may not be one of Oliver Stones's best films, but it still manages to be captivating. Salma Hayek and Benicio Del Toro are great in this, as well as Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch, even though their characters are a bit underdeveloped. However, this movie is extremely violent and brutal, and it is not recommended for those with weak stomachs.