Savages (2012) (R) ★★½

Review Date: July 5th, 2012

The basic premise of most crime revenge dramas is how much of our humanity we're willing to trade to get back what the other people — the ostensible baddies — have taken from us. Oliver Stone returns to this familiar stomping ground with Savages, a splashy adaptation of Don Winslow's novel about a unique love affair, a major marijuana-dealing business, and an increasingly violent pissing match between two SoCal growers and the Baja Cartel.

Stone's frenetic visual style is in full swing, but even this Oscar-winning auteur can't quite raise the film from mediocrity. It's hard to care whether or not Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) rescue their gorgeous mutual girlfriend O (Blake Lively) from the cartel if O isn't engaging enough to persuade us she's worth the bloodshed. O (short for Ophelia — an allusion to her earthshaking climaxes) is not a well-written character to begin with, but she's even less engaging as played by Lively. Johnson is unconvincing as the bleeding heart Ben, and the details his character is given — extra earrings, a shoddy-looking tattoo on his neck, even white boy dreads at one point — undercut his believability even more. Kitsch is given a few prominent scars and a mean squint, but he doesn't quite bring the weird, slightly empty vibe of Chon to life.

On the villain side, Benicio Del Toro chews every inch of scenery from Laguna Beach to Tijuana as Lado. He's rocking an intense moustache that he strokes when he's lying or being a creep (which is most of the time), a vaguely mullet-like wig, and a fondness for torture. Salma Hayek takes no prisoners as the head of the cartel, nicknamed Elena la Reina, who is both a frustrated mom whose college-age daughter is blowing her off (aw!) and a brutally tough woman in a man's world. John Travolta definitely enjoys a bit of Pulp Fiction ridiculousness as Dennis, a DEA official who's in Ben and Chon's pocket. It's hard to tell just how funny Savages is aiming to be. Lado, Elena, and Dennis are cartoonish, but Ben, Chon, and O are earnest — which is to say, a little bit boring.

The double- and triple-crossing is practically moot, as is the wacky technology that Ben and Chon employ; it's like The Social Network meets surfers. The real meat of the movie is the flash and violence, but it's not the kind of thing that stays with you like Stone's Natural Born Killers. Savages doesn't have the same lingering aftertaste. It's not that a movie needs to have some sort of message with its pointed commentary on the media's bloodlust, but the gist of Savages — that we're all savages at heart, or that we can easily become a savage given the right circumstances — is not that interesting or unique.

Oddly enough, Savages pulls a few punches when it comes to its source material (hard to believe when the movie kicks off with a glimpse of an abattoir-like enclosure and close-ups of men begging for their lives just as a chainsaw revs in the background). Winslow's book is a quick, enjoyable read, with an interesting on-page style that's hard to replicate verbally. It has a sort of ADD-addled feel that the movie tries to but doesn't quite capture. While it's not always fair to compare an adaptation to the book it's based on, Winslow is both the author and one of the screenplay writers, so some of the choices made behind the scenes don't quite add up. Cut are significant and menacing back story for Lado and all of the zestiness out of O. Why add in certain plot points and take out others, unless it was to give one of its big name stars more screen time? The most interesting part of the story, the love story, is treated like a wink wink homoerotic thing than an actual relationship between three people who adore each other, which is how it's portrayed in the book. It's hard not to be a little disappointed, especially given Stone's no-f**ks-given attitude. (Or, as O would say, baditude.)

That said, it is a somewhat entertaining diversion and a nice tour of lifestyles of the rich and criminal. Lively is all tangled tan limbs and luxurious hippie clothes, and the homes they frequent, whether on Laguna Beach or a desert compound, are meticulously decorated with exquisite, expensive taste. Santa Muerte imagery also figures heavily in the background of many scenes. The scenery is gorgeous — even the marijuana looks amazing. It's good for adults to have another R-rated choice in what's usually a season dominated by blockbusters, but in years to come, you'll more likely to reach for your old True Romance DVD than Savages.