I had seen the trailer for "Savages" when Three and I had gone to see "The Dark Knight Rises" and was mildly interested in seeing it. Today, Three and I decided that we wanted to go see "Ice Age: Continental Drift," because hey, John Leguizamo as a dumb-as-rocks sloth? Yes, thank you. But when we got to the theater, we were disappointed to find out that the showing wasn't until 9:40P, and we are old and want to be back home to do our yoga before then. "Savages" was going to be playing in a few minutes, so we thought, "What the hell? Mindless action movie, sure."
After about an hour and twenty minutes in, we walked the fuck out. And even that was too long.
Now, this is a girl who sat through "Battlefield Earth" in its entirety, thinking, "Surely this gets better." That provided my father and me with plenty of snark-filled conversation the whole way home. "Savages" ... well, let's just say that I was a little shell-shocked.
From the trailer, it looked like an explosion-filled, fun action flick, with a willing love triangle and two dudes out to rescue the woman they both love, Ophelia or just O, as she wants to be called. What they don't show you is the guy being whipped so badly that his eyeball pops out. Oh, and then they have the Buddhist, peace-loving pot smoker Ben (who is one of our protagonists) light him on fire with a flare. They also don't show this kid in over his head who is thinking about raping the wife of a man his boss just shot in the kneecaps (and finally killed him, after letting the guy drag himself across the floor), only to have the boss shoot her in cold blood. Because, you know, they don't want witnesses. Fine, whatever.
And from the Wikipedia article, the movie didn't really get better than that. If you don't like spoilers, you probably shouldn't be reading this post, but particularly this part, because it's the ending. Apparently, the first ending is a dream sequence where the main characters all die from a purposeful overdose of ... something. I don't know, nor do I care. And then it's revealed that they don't die. Oh, no. Instead, it's revealed that this is what in O's deranged mind is the better way this story could have ended. They blackmail Dennis, a corrupt DEA agent played by John Travolta, and end up starting their lives over out of the country.
So let me get this straight, Oliver Stone. This woman wanted to die with the two loves of her life, instead of living the remainder of her days with them? Well, I guess it would kind of be the same thing, only with a different time span? Or maybe she was hoping to mix and match Shakespeare plays. Honestly, who fucking knows.
This gets us to my next point. I could not stand O. From the first time her stupid voice-over ambled over the black and white waves of the Pacific Ocean, I rolled my eyes with every syllable that came out of her mouth. And the director did not give me any reason as to why two pot producers/dealers/whatever they were would have given two shits about her. Sure, they're in a polyamorous relationship. That's fine with me. But please do not expect me to believe that either one of these guys would have committed mass murder to save a girl that, for all I know, just gives them orgasms. There are three sex scenes within the first thirty minutes of the movie. In the first, Chon (another protagonist; and Oliver Stone, Chon? Really? Chon??), a veteran of the Afghan and Iraq War, is pretty much balls deep in Blake Lively's O (hahaha, her name is O and she's having an O-rgasm!! hahahah, how clever), and she's narrating it with this lovely bit: "I have orgasms. He has wargasms." Ahhhh, that's right. This guy is getting over his PTSD by ramming a perpetually high girl. Okay. In the second sex scene, Ben has just gotten home from Africa (they don't say where, and hahaha, Africa is a country, right??), where he was doing some type of philanthropy work, and O goes on to hop in the bath with him, fully dressed (well, she was wearing a short yellow dress and I think bikini bottoms), saying that she gets fucked by Chon but she makes love with Ben. Again, okay. Then later on, they all get high and proceed to have a threesome. Granted, we only see the feeling up of O, but we're all adults here. We know what happens after the screen goes to black.
So we know this much of their relationship. O is with both men; both are okay with this and have sex with her separately and together. That's it. We kind of are told that they met her when she started working at their grow-op, but nothing else. Their connection is pretty much sexual, from what I can tell, and quite frankly, that's not enough reason for me to believe that these two guys would try to rescue her at all.
Then there's the fact that, while the Baja Cartel seems to be uber-powerful, they can't seem to figure out who kills seven of their guys. And Elena, the boss lady, apparently is ill-equipped to run a cartel since a blond American makes her feel bad ... or something? I have no idea as to why she would even care if O had proper lodgings, especially since she was going to kill her anyway.
I mean, I get it. Oliver Stone wanted to create an anti-drug war movie. But you also kind of have to have a convincing story, buddy. And also convincing characters. If I want an over the top violent movie, I'll watch a Tarantino movie. Which reminds me: "The Man with the Iron Fists" looks AWESOME.
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