Savages

The only thing of any interest in Savages is that it shows a polyamorous relationship working out perfectly well for all three involved. Other than that it’s a story about Mexican drug cartels and the corruption of the DEA told through a trio of vapid beach bunnies with nice, hard bodies. It comes complete with a checklist of stereotypical characters, lazy visual short hands and a cloying narration to wrap it all up for your viewing pleasure.

It tells the story of Ben (Aaron Johnson, yes please) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch, ditto), two surfer buddies who grow and sell weed and live with their mutual girlfriend O (Blake Lively, way out of her acting depth). Ben and Chon begin to encroach upon and get the attention of the Baja cartel, whom they swiftly anger. Next thing you know O gets kidnapped and the boys go on a rescue mission. If the plot had focused instead on the leader of the Baja cartel (Salma Hayek, turning in a great performance even when the script lets her down, which is often) we may have had something more engaging, exciting and unique here.

Savages may have three pretty but vacuous leads, of which only Johnson makes any kind of impact as an actor, but it surrounds them with a gifted supporting cast, that it doesn’t always know what to do with. Emile Hirsch is always a pleasure to me (for several reasons), and he always turns in good work. He’s given very limited screen time and nothing much to do, but at least he seems to be having some fun with the material. John Travolta’s character suffers from clichéd and lazy character motivations (he’s a DEA agent on the take because he has a wife with cancer) and even lazier visual shortcuts (we know he’s corrupt because he’s always inhaling junk food), but he does his best. His character’s penchant for ranting, raving and proving to be an excellent emotional manipulator offers him several chances to show that when he wants to act, he can be damn fine at it.

But other than sexy ciphers with no discernible personality traits, the other major problem with the characters is on the cartel side. Benicio del Toro is in full-on Grand Guignol mode, but his character is an assembly of stereotypical Mexican gangsters stitched together and given bizarre life not but the script, but by del Toro’s strange acting choices. Sure, he goes too far into theatrical, hammy, overacting, but it makes his character more exciting and lively that way. And Hayek is given a meaty role after years of playing bland supporting characters, but that comes with a hitch. Yes, her character runs the cartel and is a dangerous femme fatale in a Cleopatra wig, but she’s also a woman easily swayed by her emotions, needy, hysterical and every joke about a woman in power going crazy because of PMS and general female-ness shows it ugly head from time to time. Like del Toro she tries to reshape it through sheer acting talent, but there’s only so far one can take it beyond what was written on the page.

And in the end we’re treated to two different endings. One which seems like the logical, even if extremely violent, conclusion to the story, and the other which seems like some bullshit, tacked-on Hollywood happy ending. This schizophrenic two-tone mindset is like the film in microcosm. At once, very realistic, even if given a hyperbolic visual flair, and cartoonish, engineered of equal parts reportage and pulpy violence, yet it never sticks to one or the other long enough to matter. It’s serious one minute and cartoonishly over-the-top the next effectively killing the suspense and lowering the stakes. Savages needed the whacked-out Oliver Stone of Natural Born Killers to be anything remotely worth watching.