Movie Review: Much ado about dope in 'Savages'

Oliver Stone made a crime caper? Yeah, and it’s a good one too. Like all Ollie Stone movies, this one comes with impressionistic touches and an intrinsically flawed nature. They’re natural side effects when you emphasize one aspect of the narrative above all others. If you’ve watched any of his previous full-length features like “Any Given Sunday,” “The Doors” or the hallucinatory “Natural Born Killers,” you’ll be familiar with this style and know that it’s just the way the cookie crumbles when you view a Stone movie (pun’s all mine). In the case of “Savages”, it’s how brutality, betrayal, and politicking infect every aspect of the drug trade. Even something as relatively easy-going as the marijuana business has its downside. Exhibit A are dope entrepreneurs and best friends Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson), who’ve spent their lives trying to grow the best weed in the world, keeping their business as low key and blood-free as possible.   It helps that the two are kept on an even keel by the love of a beautiful, California woman named Ophelia, or simply O (Blake Lively) – she’s the narrative voice of the movie. Some would call it a polyamorous relationship, with O being the girlfriend of both men. These days it’d simply be marked down as “it’s complicated.” After she does the nasty with each man, O interrupts our pre-formed opinion when she declares, “I know what you’re thinking: ‘Slut!’” (Unconfirmed Hollywood gossip says Lindsay Lohan was supposed to be cast in this role, which would have been an unmitigated clusterfrak.) The three have prospered in Laguna Beach, a seaside resort in Orange County, California where the young, wealthy, and bored come to retire or play. Ben handles the science, botany, and the social work (yes, charity) of the dope operation, while ex-Navy SEAL and war veteran Chon handles enforcement (he also smuggled the seeds from a tour of Afghanistan).     Like all small businesses that go supernova, eventually the multi-nationals will take notice and make you an offer. In Ben and Chon’s case, it’s Mexico’s Baja drug cartel that wants a piece of the “best dope in the world.” And boy, are they made an offer they can’t refuse. A-list threesome, etc “Savages” is based on the novel of the same name by Don Winslow, and though that novel features a winding plot and a cast of characters that interlace together in a web of cross and double-cross, Stone’s movie is simplified down to our threesome. You can probably tell from the posters that an A-list cast populates this movie. In addition to Kitsch and Lively, Demian Bichir, John Travolta, Emile Hirsch, Benicio del Toro and Salma Hayek appear here in various supporting roles. Thespian stand outs are Taylor Kitsch (who finally found a role he could shine in) as the traumatized war veteran and Salma Hayek as the Baja cartel’s head honcho “La Reina” Elena Sanchez.        Hayek’s Elena is saddled with droll lines that would be cringe-worthy if they weren’t coming out of her lips: “You know what they say? If the mountain does not come to Muhammad, Muhammad goes to California!” La Reina sure displays balls and knows how to wield power, ordering heinous acts without blinking, giving her lieutenants grand dressing downs. In a later scene, she verbally cuts down Ophelia when O declares that she’s the only one who can get Ben and Chon together: “Are you really bragging about that? . . .They love each other more than they do you, otherwise they wouldn’t share you.” Ouch. Though the narrative can be prickly in places, the caper nature does carry the day as Ben and Chon struggle to stay ahead of the curve when Elena has O kidnapped, using the girlfriend as leverage to get the boys to commit to a three-year contract with the cartel as growers. We're all stars in the dope show Also watch out for John Travolta as the crooked DEA agent Dennis and Benicio Del Toro as the vicious Lado. The latter’s raping, double-dealing, kneecap-shooting portrayal of the cartel’s northern enforcer makes him THE bad guy epitomized with a handlebar moustache. He’s a mesmerizing figure, even when he whips a former colleague mercilessly. Expect some Mexican lawnmowing cliches put to deadly use by Lado, too.    There’s gunfights, explosions, plot twists, threats of dismembered digits, and backroom dealings that make sure we’re kept guessing who’s conspiring with who. If you’re in the right mood, you can really appreciate the way Stone makes the sunlit world of the Laguna Beach dope trade a sordid mess of sex and violence.   From a certain narrative stand point there’s no other way to portray the complex themes running through it. Especially in Ophelia’s imagined finale, a ‘til-death-do-us-three-part, blaze of glory fantasy that is totally worth the sometimes tedious exposition. This scene even made it to our “Top 20 Most Epic” list of 2012. How I see it is, there’s an A-list cast here and a top shelf director with material that bleeds complexity, so you kind of expect more than flashy mayhem and creative invectives in Spanglish (oh, I got to love Hayek for this). But that’s really as far as this caper goes. Which is really not a bad thing at all. Even Ollie Stone’s B-roll is entertaining and breath taking in parts, the layered mess better than your average caper movie that Hollywood churns out every month.   Still, it’s only a summertime fun film. Stay out too long in the sun and the ice cream of its heavy handed “let’s get violent with ganja!” thrust will get to you; so bring sunblock, pack a pipe, and enjoy the trip with the brutes. Don’t think too much on the economies of dope scale and you’ll be all right. — BM, GMA News "Savages" opens exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas on February 20. All photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.