“Gossip Girl” and “Green Lantern”
sensation Blake Lively stars as Ophelia, an extraordinary beauty who shares an
unconventional relationship with two men, in director Oliver Stone's
unpredictable thriller “Savages.”
Also
starring Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Benecio del Toro, Salma
Hayek, Emile Hirsch and Demian Bichir, “Savages” is shown exclusively at
Ayala Malls Cinemas starting Feb. 20. Moviegoers can catch it at Glorietta 4,
Greenbelt 3, Trinoma, Alabang Town Center and Market! Market!
In
the film, Laguna Beach entrepreneurs Ben (Johnson), a peaceful and charitable
Buddhist, and his closest friend Chon (Kitsch), a former Navy SEAL and
ex-mercenary, run a lucrative, homegrown industry—raising some of the best
marijuana ever developed. They also share a one-of-a-kind love with Ophelia, or
simply, O (Lively). Life is idyllic in their Southern California town...until
the Mexican Baja Cartel decides to move in and demands that the trio partners
with them. And so begins a series of increasingly vicious ploys and maneuvers
in a high stakes, savage battle of wills.
Lively
plays the beautiful, warmhearted O—a free spirit who, when kidnapped, proves to
have just as much grit and fortitude as the Baja Cartel. About his choice for
the part, Stone commends: "Blake's an impressive actress. She was only 23.
She had a lot of input into her character and is fearless. Blake has to appear
in the movie often in an unflattering light, and she never flinched."
Lively
becomes the voice of “Savages,” as O narrates the tale, and Stone used the
voiceover technique as efficiently and specifically as possible. The director
explains: "The idea of O narrating the movie grew naturally from the book,
where she tells the story to the reader. But a voiceover in a film can
potentially sap it of its tension by making it overly self-conscious. Insofar
as the book has more than a hundred scenes and many characters, far more than
we can afford in a movie, we worked to minimize the information and still use
the voiceover to connect the dots."
For
her part, Lively liked the fact that "O is the one thread that ties
everyone together." Indeed, she interacts in multiple scenes with most of
the other actors and had to run the gamut as a performer, and calls the shoot
"intense, tumultuous and challenging." Says the actress: "It was
amazing because I got to exist in each character's world, from this privileged
life with the boys in Laguna to being tortured and in cages and being shipped
off to Tijuana. It was a challenge to experience so much in a film on so many
different levels—from ultimate happiness to ultimate pain."
The
Southern California native was fascinated by the story's take on a
nontraditional family and how three people could love each other that much.
Lively offers that she treated O's story with respect and care: "One of
the main reasons that I felt that Ben, Chon and O were together is that they
were each other's family. They were each other's everything. None of them had
real families. They did not have anyone to learn from, no one who was there for
them through thick and thin. And they found that in each other."
Lively
was named Breakthrough Performer of the Year at CinemaCon 2011. She most
recently starred opposite Ryan Reynolds in “Green Lantern.” Prior to that, she
starred alongside Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner and Ben Affleck in “The Town,” which
Affleck also directed.
No comments:
Post a Comment