A Savage mistreatment of cinema - Savages review

Taken was, amazingly, a film headed up by French creatives that also managed to be downright racist to any character not firmly rooted in America. It is also in high competition for the worst film of the new millennium. Now, Oliver Stone’s attempt to be edgy and relevant throws Taken some very strong contention. Savages, in the most childish, ham-fisted way imaginable, tries to cover near-every possibly controversial or delicate subject you care to think of. You’ve got drugs, the cartels, immigration, war, three-way relationships, torture, rape, corruption, even cancer makes an offensively inconsequential entry in an effort to leave no ethical rock unturned. 

When within the first five minutes of a film a character says the line “I had orgasms, he had wargasms” I should have understood that as Oliver Stone kindly beckoning to the doors and saying “please leave, this is only going to get worse”. However, I sat through the following unintentionally funny first hour and the plain aggravating and boring second. The film opens with Blake Lively’s character, O, spouting a moody monologue attempting to set up the protagonists’ loving three-way relationship and layering on foreboding of their future sanctity. The film pooters along feeling like an unholy union between late Tony Scott films and Tarantino at his most self-indulgent. It is the very definition of thematically inconsistent while trying to hold up plot strands besieged with torture and high end drug running then having Benicio Del Toro play no less than an actual moustache twiddling cartoon villain who wouldn’t be out of place beside Bugs Bunny and also doubles up as a sadistic maniac and rapist.

Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson prepare for war

When the two male protagonists, Chon and Ben’s, ethical pot empire is picked up on by higher powers they politely refuse any form of partnership, resulting in kidnap and payback on all fronts. The couple of action scenes are, well, they’re fine. Said set pieces seem to be conceived with great care and thought by the two, calling in allies from the boys’ days in the army. Though, the scenes of action seem to amount to no more than donning silly masks and blowing up and shooting everything and everyone in sight. The choice of shots in these sequences feels very gamey (focused on POV violence and lack of in-combat reason aside from ‘kill everyone’). In fact any gamer that doesn’t instantly cast their mind to Army of Two in these scenes needs to wake up (though no blame to anyone who decided to grab some shut eye by this point). It says a lot about both Savages and the rapidly advancing validity of games that the likes of Uncharted 3 can create action set pieces with far more creativity and emotional engagement than an Oliver Stone film.       

Ultimately the film is summed up quite nicely by its own ending. Stone had so many ideas he wanted to tackle in Savages that he simply decided to cram them all in. It isn’t really a spoiler to say that the film has two endings of sorts. Many internet threads argue which ending was better and why the film should have stuck to one of them but this argument is totally invalid and unneeded because really, both endings are just terrible. Boring and confused, the ending struggles to eek out theorems on love and violence that don’t amount to anything. Lastly, any film without the confidence to let the narrative validate the title instead of using the words ‘savages’ or ‘savage’ over half a dozen time doesn’t deserve an audience's intelligence.