Savages
by Oliver Stone (2012)
Ben and Chon live in Laguna Beach, love the beautiful Ophelia, and produce the best marijuana in Southern California. A brutal Mexican drug cartel soon takes an interest in their trade, in a violent and aggressive manner.
“They say weed is a bad thing, but in such a bad world, it’s good.”
(Ophelia)
The good herb.
Paradise on earth is a place that looks like a postcard with miles of white sand and crystal-clear water. It’s a beach house in perfect Hollywood style with a large terrace overlooking the ocean. It’s the love shared by two friends, free of jealousy for a girl who could easily grace the cover of a fashion magazine. Love, of course, reciprocated.
All this is thanks to magical seeds from Afghanistan, the best in the world, able to dominate a market where demand never knows a lull, not even in times of crisis. Ben and Chon are aware that their fortune depends on all of this—the privilege of living like kings in a place where it is said even God parked on the seventh day, only to be removed on the eighth.
Considerations
Oliver Stone knows well that the world is a dirty, ugly, and evil place, and he wants to remind us of this in every film he makes.
In Savages, he tells the story of two “simple” men who find themselves in a situation larger than themselves. The most interesting part of this film lies in the stark and harsh contrast between two opposing worlds that collide.
Idyllic landscapes and dream lives gradually give way to a universe dominated by the extreme ferocity of international drug trafficking. Some scenes showing the bodily torture inflicted on traitors of the cartel are undeniably hard to digest, making this film unsuitable for everyone.
As usual, Stone divides the world into good and evil, and he does it quite definitively. Ben and Chon on one side, with their dream life, and a criminal organization led by the powerful Elena on the other. And then there’s Lado, the cold executor of the cartel’s will (a Benicio Del Toro never so evil and cynical).
But the most fascinating character, even if negatively, is certainly Dennis, played by John Travolta. A corrupt DEA agent, slippery and ambiguous, who survives the events without ever taking a firm position, guided solely by opportunism.
Savages is not a perfect film, but it can be forgiven some questionable choices (like the double ending) in light of its adrenaline-pumping pace and numerous spectacular sequences.
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