Savages

Oliver Stone was for a time considered a veritable enfant terrible among American directors, a reputation cemented in particular by the scandalous film Natural Born Killers, but also by his outspoken criticism of politics and society and always surprising stylistic devices. In recent years, it looked as if Stone had lost his bite. Even his political satire W., which unfortunately went completely under with audiences, was surprisingly well-behaved by Stone's standards, and his hotly anticipated Wall Street sequel disappointed with an extremely weak finale after a successful opening. Now, however, the director surprises with an adaptation of Don Winslow's best-selling Time of Wrath that, at least visually, allows Stone's old quality to shine through again.

Savages tells of two friends, Buddhist Ben (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and former mercenary Chon (Taylor Kitsch), who live a luxurious life in Laguna Beach in a three-way relationship with the beautiful Ophelia (Blake Lively). The fact that they can afford expensive cars and their fancy mansion is due to the fact that the two young men have grown some particularly good marijuana, which provides them with an extremely lucrative source of income. But of course, the competition never sleeps. Especially the boss of the Baja cartel, the ice-cold Elena (Salma Hayek), wants a piece of the pie of the friends. Realizing that she won't be able to maintain the high quality of the stuff without their expertise, her henchman Lado (Benicio Del Toro) is tasked with persuading Ben and Chon to work with the Baja Cartel. But when they announce that they are only willing to sell and that they want to withdraw from the business themselves in the foreseeable future, Elena has to resort to other means. But she hasn't reckoned with the unflinching tenacity with which Ben and Cho stick to their principles...

Savages is a crude mix of thriller, drama, romance and comedy that at times feels very straightforward and at other times like a confused drug binge. In the process, Stone often gets too lost in his stylish imagery and such dialogue that is meant to be an expression of the superficiality of luxury living in Laguna Beach. He should have rather spent this time on character development, so that the viewer can build up a certain bond with them. But since this is only partially successful, the entire story takes on the flavor of irrelevance, which doesn't help the entertainment value.

No question, the film boasts great actors and some very well done moments. John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro in particular, but also Salma Hayek deliver quite wonderful and at times extremely amusing performances. And the way Ben and Chon strike back against Elena is full of surprises, clever twists and turns and also a good portion of suspense. Still, there are just too many moments that are dramaturgically weak or staged in a too-effortfully-cool way for the film to be convincing as a whole.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the finale. Of course, not too much should be given away at this point. Only this much: there are actually two endings. The first is great, consistent, and almost cynical in a way. If the movie would really have ended at this point, you could have easily overlooked the aforementioned weaknesses and Savages would have been a first class Stone of the old school. But for a reason we can't quite understand, a second ending was added to the finale - and this one dilutes everything that was served to the audience before. Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that the last minutes ruin the whole movie. But it can be said that viewers, who would have been compensated for some of the weak points by the first ending and would have given the movie a very good report card because of that, are still thrown in front of their heads once again at the end. Oliver Stone truly did himself no favors with this.

All in all, Savages is a big step back to form for the cult director. It's a very entertaining film with some great moments but also quite a few weak ones, sadly denied a truly worthy ending probably for political correctness reasons. Still: worth seeing for fans of the director!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp