Savages

For the first time in the history of Stranded Cinema, I have an exclusive. Despite it not being released until late September in the UK, I have already seen Savages. In fact, I saw it at a free preview screening several months ago. Although the agreement not to discuss the film at these screenings is hardly enforced, I have held back. However, as it's been released in the USA, I feel that I can now post my thoughts safely. It’s the latest project from Oliver Stone, developed from a novel by Don Winslow. The first thing to say is that this is a terrible film. Two marijuana growers in California, who share a girlfriend called ‘O’, get into trouble with a Mexican cartel who want to take over the market. Their girlfriend is eventually taken hostage and they must struggle to find a way to release her. The plot, as you can tell, sounds like a Tarantino film from the 90s, and that’s exactly what it feels like it is trying to be. The narrative starts, however, with little or no set up. Why do we care about these characters, who are little more than drug dealers with heart? What interest do we have in them? We’re given a narration by ‘O’, but rather than helping it is annoying. It continues far too long. ‘Show, don’t tell’ is the classic imperative of good cinema which Stone has ignored here. The audience isn’t stupid, unless you want them to be. The narration is drifting and vacant, over slow motion or blurred shots, portentous in its content, with pseudo-intellectual insights such as ‘I had orgasms, he had wargasms’.  Salma Hayek plays the Mexican cartel leader – a deeply flawed, unbelievable character, badly acted. Someone can’t be a heartless psychotic businesswoman, and a loving mother. There is an extent to which this can’t be stretched. Travolta is good enough as a slimy federal agent, but the best thing about this film (as in most films he’s in) is Benicio del Toro. He plays the right-hand man of Hayek’s character, and tours California with a gang of Mexican gardeners, turning up at people’s houses and torturing/killing them. He is so good it’s almost funny. Even his character, however, is stretched to breaking point towards the end. The one powerful moment of this film is the revelation of the rape, but what is the point? It means nothing and has no implications to the plotline. Lastly, the double-ending will annoy almost everyone who sees it, and is again pointless. The final conclusion of the film is deeply unsatisfactory. Nothing is resolved. It is escapism as its worst – they leave the country and all of their responsibilities to live happily ever after. It may be that the film was improved with further editing after the preview screenings, but there are fundamental flaws here which I don’t think can be ironed out. Any work of art that at some point resorts to the dictionary definition of its title for any sort of meaning, as this film does, has lost all hope.