Movie Review - ‘Savages’

By Bob Garver

Here’s how excited I was to see “Sav­ages”: My favorite pizza place is located next to a sub­way entrance. Above the entrance is a prominently-displayed ad for “Sav­ages”. One night while I was pick­ing up some gar­lic knots, I pointed to the sign just out­side and told the cashier that I couldn’t wait to see “Sav­ages”. The cashier and I hadn’t been talk­ing about the movie or even movies in gen­eral. I just felt the need to blurt out how awe­some it looked. The movie promised to be an action-packed thrill ride with Salma Hayek as the car­tel leader vil­lain. Salma Hayek is in the movie as a car­tel leader vil­lain, but the movie isn’t nearly as excit­ing as it claims to be.

The film stars Blake Lively as Ophe­lia, shared girl­friend of entre­pre­neurs Ben (Aaron John­son) and Chon (Tay­lor Kitsch). Ben and Chon run a quaint lit­tle drug empire in Cal­i­for­nia while Ophe­lia spends her time… hang­ing out with them I guess. They have a huge man­sion, a pile of money, and a rel­a­tively trouble-free oper­a­tion. They don’t even have to worry about the DEA, thanks to a cozy rela­tion­ship with crooked agent Den­nis (John Tra­volta). Much is made of the dis­parate per­son­al­i­ties of the peace­ful Ben and the mil­i­tant Chon early in the film, but once the plot kicks into gear, they pretty much become the same character.

Deter­mined to ruin the trio’s idyl­lic lifestyle is vicious car­tel leader Elena Sanchez (Hayek). She wants Ben and Chon’s busi­ness, but more than that she wants Ben and Chon. She wants them as employ­ees so they can bring her the suc­cess they brought them­selves. Elena makes them a tempt­ing finan­cial offer, but they politely refuse, pre­fer­ring an early retire­ment to stay­ing in the game too long. She responds by hav­ing her goons led by Lado (Beni­cio Del Toro) kid­nap Ophe­lia. Now the deal is that Ophe­lia will remain a hostage until she gets the ser­vices she wants from Chon and Ben. They aren’t inter­ested in tak­ing this deal either. They decide to resort to vio­lence to get Ophe­lia back.

I don’t think the script does a sin­gle char­ac­ter jus­tice. The pro­tag­o­nists are unlike­able, and not because they’re drug crim­i­nals, but because they’re spoiled, unde­vel­oped and dull. Most of the audi­ence at my screen­ing was root­ing for Elena at the end, and while I’m the first to cham­pion Hayek’s charm, the audi­ence should love to hate her, not just love her. The film wants us to see that Elena has a vul­ner­a­ble side, but it spends so much time dri­ving the point home that by the end we only see her as vul­ner­a­ble. Lado is lit­tle more than a one-note sicko, and Den­nis is only in the movie so char­ac­ters from both sides can “sell out” by try­ing to work with him.

The prob­lems with “Sav­ages” don’t stop at the char­ac­ters. The action sequences feel rou­tine and incon­se­quen­tial. The “shock­ing” vio­lence that the film is so proud of isn’t much dif­fer­ent from what you’d find in one of those walk-through haunted house attrac­tions that adver­tise with fliers at fast food restau­rants. Per­haps most annoy­ing of all is the fake-out end­ing that serves no pur­pose other than to give the film a fake-out end­ing. I went out of my way to tell the cashier at my favorite pizza place that I wanted to see “Sav­ages”. Now while I’m eat­ing cold pizza I’m telling you that I didn’t like it.

One and a Half Stars out of Five.

“Sav­ages” is rated R for strong bru­tal and grisly vio­lence, some graphic sex­u­al­ity, nudity, drug use, and lan­guage through­out. Its run­ning time is 120 minutes.

Con­tact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.

Posted by Bob Garver on Jul 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.