Oliver Stone's "Savages", A Review

That's actually Justin Bieber on the right

WARNING: There be spoilers

After being promised "powerful nihilistic visions of a world turned upside down", I knew I wanted to see Oliver Stone's "Savages", a movie playing on the drug trade story with (hopefully) insights into the recent U.S./Mexico border violence we've heard so much about in the news. I do love a stark, unvarnished look at the world with all the propaganda and American Dream garbage swept away so we can get down to brass tacks and finally start to solve our problems. That's the power a film can bring.

The journey into criminality can prove fascinating. Australia's "Animal Kingdom" (2010) told the story of a teenage boy thrust into his family's perverted underworld life with suffocating fear. The even better Winter's Bone (2010) tells of a similar journey into darkness. What's so brutal about these films is not any actual act of violence, but rather the cold-blooded tearing of family bonds combined with the ruthlessness of keeping the criminal enterprise going at all costs. When Christopher Walken decides to kill his two sons in "At Close Range" for example, the camera focuses in on his face at that exact moment for a look that will haunt you into nightmares.

But we get nothing of that sort of psychological tragedy in Stone's film. Rather, we get plug and play characters with scenes of extreme violence interjected which prove more of an assault on the audience than the characters in its fetishism of execution. The characters are straight out of central casting, some even over the top in what's supposed to be an honest film. Worst offender is the leftist California drug dealer who sojourns to Africa to save something or somebody and drives an electric car because he's just so green and you know, pseudo-liberal. His partner is an Iraq war vet who maintains you can never let your enemy smell fear! Between them is the blonde beach chick they both bang without a hint a jealousy between the three. Mere plot enablers, all.

Cartels are no match for blondie and the
war vet with his camouflaged laptop!

So the chick gets kidnapped by a ruthless Mexican cartel, the boys get to show how macho and smart they are in trying to get her back. John Revolta is the trite corrupt DEA agent playing both sides and it's sort of like watching a tug-of-war match where you already know the outcome so the back and forth motions don't really mean a lot. I started closing my eyes in places where I'd fast forward on a DVD and that only got more frequent as it went along. Of course the cartel goes down and the three run away with their loot and lament how rough it is living on a foreign beach instead of an American one. Boo-hoo. Try buffing floors for a goddam living.

Here's nihilism. The little California punks get taught a lesson for resisting the cartel, are sold out by the DEA because the biggest bully on the block always wins. The girl is sold as a sex slave. Mr. Lefty lands in a Mexican jail for life. Mr. War Vet gets his legs cut off and spends his remaining days howling in a wheelchair. In the end, the one honest cop who investigates says, "Don't worry about it, Jake. It's Tijuana."

I saw a lot of "Stone is back" reviews but don't you believe it. At no time did I feel I did not know where the plot was going. It pretended to have the intricacies of a Chinatown but without a thread to connect them. The characters were predictably naive or rigid (except maybe for cartel lieutenant Lado. I had hope for him). And it's yet another retread of the-world-depends-on-your-ability-to-be-a-badass cliché. How did Jesus ever plan to be our savior without training for hand-to-hand combat and exploding IEDs?? The film is like eating bad food at a fair: clean it out of your system as soon as possible!

Watch me become a savage lefty as I learn
what the world is really about - or not!