Savages movie review

Story: Two Laguna Beach drug entrepreneurs are in conflict with a Mexican cartel.

Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures

Review: What impresses me about this movie was that it was another Oliver Stone movie. It's been a while since I've seen his last movie. The last one was Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps which he directed in 2010.

Oliver Stone is that kind of director that tells the stories about the dark side of this world or society. He exposes the realities that most are not aware of. He did this in his classic movies like Platoon, Born In The Fourth Of July, JFK, Natural Born Killers, The People vs. Larry Flint, Wall Street and my personal favorites, Heaven & Earth; The Joy Luck Club. Regardless he is a director, executive producer or screenwriter, you can be assured that it is a quality good movie.

Oliver Stone also created characters that you would not imagine in real life. One such character was Mickey(played by Woody Harrelson) from the movie, Natural Born Killers. These  type of characters are somehow glorified in an Oliver stone movie which I noticed in Savages. The protagonists are not the heroic type.

I can describe the story as not wholesome since some of the scenes are too graphic in terms of violence and sex. The only nudity that you will see is limited to butt exposure from a guy which is not the only focal point. The violence may be too hard to look at if you don't have the stomach for it.

But there will be some unpredictable turn of events in the movie and the story is still something new. The quality of filmmaking Oliver Stone does is more of the quality movies which may not be allowed in a standard Hollywood movie but more of an independent kind. For the cast, Blake Lively evolved from her usual roles like in Gossip Girl to a more mature role. In Savages, she plays Ophelia, who has a torrid relationship with two men. Taylor Kitsch is known doing action movies. Although he has share of action scenes in Savages, his character, Chon, has a different twist in it. He is an ex-Navy SEAL and ex-mercenary who runs their home-grown marijuana business with his partner, Ben and they are both in a relationship with Ophelia.

Also in Savages are John Travolta, Benicio del Toro and Salma Hayek. Travolta and Hayek are not new in this kind of movie. They already have similar types of movies with Quentin Tarantino. Besides that, these veteran actors also gave way in the spotlight for the youngbloods like Lively and Kitsch.

What makes this movie more interesting is that you can only watch it exclusively at Ayala Cinemas. Savages released and distributed by UIP through Solar Entertainment Corp.