REVIEW: Savages

Courtesy of Universal

Oliver Stone’s latest – a fast-paced, brutally violent adaptation of Don Winslow’s wickedly funny crime novel – is a faithful rendering of its source material in both plot and tone, with one major exception: a completely boneheaded ending. One ill-advised decision in the last five minutes has a profoundly disappointing effect on the previous two hours. If not for that, the grade below would be an entirely different letter.

Before the director’s decision to have his cake and eat it too, the film (co-written by Stone, Winslow and Shane Salerno) punches the gas right away and never lets up. It introduces two of the most compelling characters moviegoers will see this summer: Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch, Hollywood’s man of the moment), best friends who run an incredibly lucrative marijuana business based out of Laguna Beach, Calif.

Ben is the brains of the operation, a guy devoted to nonviolence and using the company’s massive profits to help the needy. Chon serves as the muscle, a hardened Navy SEAL who deals with the brutal realities of the drug world so Ben can float through life blissfully unaware. As Winslow puts it in the book, “Ben is the paci. Chon is the fist.”

They also share a girlfriend, O (short for Ophelia, and played by Blake Lively), who narrates the story with an appropriately stoned, detached delivery. There’s no jealousy or tension between the trio, and life is good for a while. But then the Baja Cartel, led by the merciless Elena (a fierce Salma Hayek) and her terrifying enforcer Lado (the masterful Benicio Del Toro), gets wind of Ben and Chon’s successful operation and decides to stage a hostile takeover.

That includes kidnapping O and threatening to decapitate her unless the duo agrees to the cartel’s terms. As you might imagine, Elena doesn’t realize what happens when you make Chon angry (he’s kinda like the Incredible Hulk in that respect), but she’s about to find out. With the reluctant help of a corrupt DEA agent (John Travolta), Ben and Chon wage an all-out war against the Baja Cartel.

Savages mostly captures the nihilistic humor and witty dialogue of Winslow’s writing, due in part to some impeccable casting. Johnson and Kitsch are flat-out perfect as Ben and Chon, with a rapport that makes it seem like they’ve actually been friends their entire lives. Lively is a bit more troublesome. Physically, she matches Winslow’s description of O to the letter; I just don’t think her acting abilities are up to the task of playing such a complex character.

The rest of the cast is great too. Hayek and Del Toro are both terrifying and funny in equal amounts, and Travolta continues to prove that he’s best in showy supporting roles (Pulp Fiction, anyone?). He’s able to do more in his limited amount of screen time here than he could in a lifetime of junk like The Taking of Pelham 123.

Savages is a nice recovery for Stone after a less-than-stellar decade of filmmaking. That’s why it’s such a bummer that he doesn’t stick the landing. If he’d faded to black just a few scenes earlier, or even reversed the sequencing, people might’ve been hailing this as his best work since Natural Born Killers. Instead, you can edit by remote once the movie hits DVD; just press stop precisely when it feels like the story has reached it’s natural conclusion.

Savages is rated R for strong brutal and grisly violence, some graphic sexuality, nudity, drug use and language throughout.

Grade: B-