Preview: Oliver Stone Takes on the Weed Business
Director Oliver Stone trades in his historical political rants for the sun-baked beaches of Southern California in Savages, a crime thriller revolving around a lucrative illicit enterprise. The story follows two Laguna Beach entrepreneurs who have cornered the market on high-grade homegrown marijuana. When an aggressive Mexican drug cartel demands a piece of their operation, the duo resists, triggering an escalating gang war that threatens everyone caught in the middle.
Boasting an ensemble cast that features Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Blake Lively, Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro, and John Travolta, the production attempts to combine high-stakes action with modern relationship melodrama. Viewers can expect Stone’s signature visual chaos, plenty of gunfire, and a cynical look at cross-border corruption as it arrives on home streaming platforms.
Review by Ben Dover
I sat down on my recliner, fired up my streaming app, and within five minutes of watching Savages, I already wanted to throw my remote control right through the television screen. Here we have a couple of smug twenty-somethings who think they have conquered the universe because they grow fancy weed in a Laguna Beach mansion. One is a tree-hugging pacifist who probably cries when a houseplant wilts, and the other is a brooding ex-Navy SEAL who looks like he eats gravel for breakfast. If that were not irritating enough, they share the same girlfriend. Back in my day, we called that a recipe for a fistfight in the front yard, but today’s coddled youth probably call it modern enlightenment. Give me a break.
The whole setup falls apart the minute real criminals show up. Salma Hayek plays the head of a Mexican cartel, and she wants to partner up with these two beach bums. Naturally, the boys say no thanks because they want to take their millions and hide out in Indonesia or whatever trendy travel spot kids brag about on the internet. So what does the cartel do? They kidnap their shared girlfriend, played by Blake Lively, whose endless whiny voiceover makes you wonder why anybody would fire a single bullet to rescue her, let alone start a miniature world war.
Now, credit where it is due. Whenever Benicio del Toro and John Travolta walk onto the screen, the movie suddenly remembers how to be entertaining. Del Toro plays an oily, thoroughly disgusting cartel enforcer who looks like he has not showered since 1997, and he steals every scene he is in. Travolta plays a sleazy DEA agent with a sick wife who plays both sides just to stay afloat. When these two veteran scoundrels are lying to each other and stabbing people in the back, the movie actually has some genuine bite. You can tell they understand what kind of sleazy pulp story this is supposed to be.
Unfortunately, Oliver Stone cannot get out of his own way. He directs this thing like an hyperactive teenager who drank four energy drinks and discovered the editing software on a laptop. We get random bursts of grainy black-and-white footage, garish digital color filters, and choppy slow-motion cuts that made my head hurt. Stone wants this to be a serious, gritty critique of the War on Drugs, but he shoots it like a two-hour music video for spoiled brats.
And then comes the ending. Oh boy, the ending. Without spoiling the specifics just yet, Stone pulls a trick so cheap and cowardly that it practically insults anybody who invested two hours of their evening. He gives you one dramatic, bloody resolution, laughs in your face, and says just kidding, here is what really happened. It is lazy, it is frustrating, and it completely ruined whatever goodwill the movie had built up. It is not completely unwatchable thanks to the villains, but it is definitely a movie made by people who think they are much cooler than they actually are.
Who Stars in the Movie
- Taylor Kitsch as Chon: The ex-Navy SEAL with severe anger issues and a military haircut. Kitsch scowls his way through the entire runtime, mostly shooting big automatic weapons and reminding everyone that he has zero emotions left inside.
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ben: The peace-loving Berkeley graduate who talks about positive energy, botany, and giving money away to poor villagers, right up until he has to light bad guys on fire.
- Blake Lively as Ophelia (“O”): The spoiled narrator caught in the middle. Lively spends half the movie shopping at high-end boutiques and the other half locked in a cartel dog cage while whining about how hard her life is.
- Salma Hayek as Elena Sanchez: The ruthless cartel queenpin rocking a Cleopatra wig. She spends her days running a multi-million-dollar cartel while micro-managing her rebellious teenage daughter over Skype.
- Benicio del Toro as Lado: Elena’s psychopathic enforcer. Del Toro puts on a masterclass in being pure grease and malice, easily making him the best part of the entire picture.
- John Travolta as Dennis Cain: A corrupt, sweating DEA agent who takes bribes, trades government secrets, and tries not to get murdered by either side.
- Demián Bichir as Alex: Elena’s smooth-talking cartel lawyer who acts tough right up until the torture tools come out.
Thoughts on Special Effects
The movie relies heavily on practical explosions, gunfire, and gore rather than massive computer generated sets. When the shootouts happen, they look painful and messy, which fits the crime genre just fine. You get decapitated heads in coolers, bodies burned to a crisp, and a lot of squibs going off during bullet hits. The digital fire and muzzle flashes look a bit rubbery in a few scenes, but the biggest visual problem is not the effects team. The problem is Oliver Stone switching camera formats, grain sizes, and color palettes every five seconds like an indecisive decorator.
Music
The score by Adam Peters provides a decent, moody, bass-heavy background that builds decent tension during the kidnappings and roadside ambushes. The soundtrack is packed with tracks from Bob Dylan, Massive Attack, and Cut Copy, clearly chosen to please both old-school rock fans and modern electronic listeners. It sets the sun-drenched, drug-addled California vibe well enough, even if none of the tunes stay in your head five minutes after the credits roll.
Rating
3 out of 5 Stars (Saved from the bargain bin solely by Benicio del Toro and John Travolta doing their best to act like authentic slimeballs).
If you love gorgeous California scenery interrupted by brutal decapitations and ridiculous plot twists, this is the movie for you.
Complete Synopsis and Plot Breakdown
The story takes place in Laguna Beach, California, where best friends Chon and Ben run a massively successful marijuana ring. Chon is an ex-Navy SEAL who brought top-grade seeds back from Afghanistan, while Ben is a peaceful UC Berkeley botanist who handles the cultivation and charitable distribution. Both men live together and openly share a romantic relationship with a carefree blonde named Ophelia, who goes by the nickname “O”.
Their idyllic, wealthy lifestyle gets ruined when the Mexican Baja Cartel, headed by Elena Sanchez, contacts them with an offer to join forces. Elena’s cartel is struggling with domestic enforcement and wants access to their elite hybrid product. Ben and Chon refuse the partnership and make arrangements to take their fortune and vanish off the map. Before they can execute their exit strategy, Elena’s brutal enforcer, Lado, abducts O from an outdoor shopping center.
Elena sends the boys a video recording of a captured O, demanding that they accept the cartel’s terms and hand over their business operations in exchange for her safety. Desperate, Ben and Chon meet with Dennis Cain, a dirty DEA agent who takes payoffs from their weed profits. Dennis advises them that the cartel is far too powerful to fight and urges them to just give Elena whatever she wants.
Chon refuses to back down. He rallies a crew of his former military buddies, equips them with high-grade tactical weapons, and decides to wage an asymmetric war against the cartel. Through Dennis, Ben and Chon discover that a rival cartel operation, led by a kingpin named El Azul, is already threatening Elena’s organization. They also learn the route of a major Baja Cartel money transfer.
Disguised in tactical gear, Ben, Chon, and their military crew stage a daylight ambush on a cartel transport in the California desert, wiping out the armed escort and stealing three million dollars. During the shootout, Ben is forced to kill a man for the first time, shattering his pacifist lifestyle. Meanwhile, O is held hostage in a dirty safe house by Lado, who torments her while Elena treats her like a captive surrogate daughter.
To cover their tracks, Ben and Chon plant stolen funds and false evidence to make it appear that Elena’s trusted lieutenant, Alex, orchestrated the heist. Lado uses this pretext to torture and kill Alex, burning him alive in front of a horrified Elena. Lado, however, is secretly plotting his own betrayal, as he has secretly allied with El Azul to take down Elena from the inside.
Ben and Chon raise the stakes by locating Elena’s estranged daughter, Magda, who is attending school in Orange County. They kidnap Magda and use her as leverage to force a direct meeting with Elena in the remote desert.
The story then presents its first climax. At the desert meeting, an exchange of hostages turns into a massive, bloody shootout. Lado shoots Chon, Chon shoots Lado, Elena gets killed, and Ben is mortally wounded. Realizing there is no escape, Chon injects Ben, O, and himself with a fatal overdose of narcotics so they can die together in an embrace.
Suddenly, O’s voice interrupts the scene to announce that this tragic ending was only a bad dream. In the actual reality, Dennis arrives at the desert meeting backed by federal tactical units before any shooting starts. Elena is arrested, Lado slips away with the stolen cash after double-crossing his boss, and Dennis manipulates the evidence to give Ben and Chon credit as federal informants. Having secured their freedom, Ben, Chon, and O leave the United States entirely and move to an off-the-grid wooden shack by the ocean to live in tropical obscurity.
5 Famous Quotes from the Movie
- Ophelia: “Just because I’m telling you this story doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end of it.”
- Chon: “You’re already dead. You’re dead from the moment you’re born. If you can accept that, you can accept anything.”
- Elena: “There is something wrong with your love story, baby.”
- Dennis:“You stabbed a federal agent!”
- Elena:“You thought I wasn’t gonna notice three million dollars and seven of my men dead?!”
5 Notes and Interesting Facts
- The movie is based on the popular 2010 crime novel of the same name written by author Don Winslow, who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Oliver Stone and Shane Salerno.
- Jennifer Lawrence was originally cast to play the role of Ophelia, but she had to drop out of the project due to scheduling conflicts when she signed on to star in The Hunger Games.
- Salma Hayek helped design the look of her cartel boss character, including insisting on wearing a striking black fringe wig based on her own creative vision of what a Mexican cartel matriarch would look like.
- The film features two distinct endings, a structural choice that came directly from Winslow’s book, where the dream sequence served as a dark contrast to the final resolution.
- Taylor Kitsch underwent intense weapons and combat training with real Navy SEALs to prepare for his action sequences, while Aaron Taylor-Johnson consulted with expert botanists to understand commercial hydroponic marijuana cultivation.
Photos
Trailer
Note: Benicio is slime personified, John Travolta is sweating through his shirt, and I need an aspirin