Savages (2012)

I love this movie so much

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

If you're looking for a movie that... ?? Wastes time, demos bad acting, plot...umm, everything, this is it. I'm thinking Travolta owed someone a favor. Some high priced actors making a mockery of good movies. My sympathy for anyone who prides (directly) to see this.

I always considered Oliver Stone to be one of Hollywood's most over- rated directors, starting with but not limited to Natural Born Killers (violence porn) and Platoon (war as a cartoon). But I can also grudgingly admit that JFK was a wildly entertaining political thriller whether or not it had a grain of truth to it. And I loved Wall Street because Michael Douglas telling all those working saps that ''greed is good'' made so many Occutards poop their short-pants. At this point, however, even die-hard Stonistas can't possibly be defending his work. He's just churning out bad movie after bad movie. This is a new low. The garish colors. The cheese-ball music. The porn scene at the beginning. Followed soon thereafter by violence porn. The grating narration (a Stone staple). I last 10 minutes but I enjoyed reading the negative reviews for at least an hour. So I got something out of it.

I watched the movie after reading many bad comments about it and after having already watched some really good cartel movies. I don't think Oliver Stone wanted to give us a gruesome cartel thriller. Yes, there were some bloody or merciless scenes but they only formed a small portion of the movie and did not distort the general entertaining mood of the movie, which I believe was Oliver Stone's real intention. He threaded it a bit lightly and kept the movie quite entertaining. This is what I would call a laid-back cartel movie that offers you a bit of everything: Love, sex, violence, excitement, revenge. People criticized the young actors too harshly here but that might be caused by their being overshadowed by veteran actors. Come on, how can you keep up with Benicio:) One thing I agree with other reviewers was that there was not any chemistry Ben, Chon and O (Blake) that makes you believe they are actually in love, but didn't it eventually turn out that their love was not real anyway? Oliver made you feel that there was something missing in their relationship from the beginning. Still, when you are finished with the movie, you end up feeling something was missing and that you are not fully satisfied. Yet, what made this movie so special to me was the mind-blowing performance of Benicio Del Toro as Lado. Oh my. He was phenomenal. He looks such a good mannered cool guy in real life that it is so hard to believe he can play such a psycho but he really plays it so well, makes you believe that he is that bad, and makes you love him anyway. It has been a couple of days since I watched the movie, and his scenes keep playing in my mind on a loop. I think this was one of his best performances, and I can watch this movie all over again simply to watch him. But would I rate this movie 8 out 10 without him? Probably not. I would probably give a 5 star if Benicio was not in it. So Kudos to Oliver Stone for giving us one of the most phenomenal bad guys on the silver screen. On a final note, I really loved the colors in this movie. As a foreigner, it made me jump on the first plane to see California. All in all, it is an entertaining movie with some great performances.

Oliver Stone has this ability to leave his mark on a movie, he has style, finesse and more importantly brings unbridled savagery to his subject matter. Whether he is telling the story of 'Ron Kovic' or exposing the corruption on 'Wall Street', his movies are tough. This is why 'Savages' is no exception, a standard storyline based around drugs and violence, Oliver Stone directs a brutal yet poetic film which manages to stand out amongst films of the same genre. The film follows two friends and their booming narcotics business who are forced to confront a violent and merciless drugs cartel, who take their shared girlfriend in exchange for a piece of their business. The film is way more superior to Ridley Scott's terrible 'The Counselor', which has some similarities to this movie. Everything about 'Savages' isn't great, but the film is different and clever, it adds style in the right places and never tries too hard to be anything it cannot be. Most importantly in my opinion, this excessively violent thriller actually allows the female artists to not only have major roles but also dominate the landscape of proceedings. Salma Hayek and Blake Lively were brilliant for me, they stole the show away from so many of their male counterparts. This is why 'Savages' is unique! @zulfmanauthor