Savages (Oliver Stone)

[Adam]

imdb

[B-side]

I kinda wanna see this.

[angrycinephile]

Hmm.

[Pop Trash]

I kinda wanna see this.

It seems B-sidey. Oliver Stone in manic panic mode (NBK, Any Given Sunday) reminds me of Tony Scott. Which is why I prefer him when he's more subdued.

[Pop Trash]

Hmm.

I always forget Barbara Kopple directed Havoc. She also directed one of my favorite documentaries.

[Spinal]

John Travolta's face drains away all interest I might have had.

[Ezee E]

Lots of talk about this being the Oliver Stone that I know and love. I think I'll see this.

[EyesWideOpen]

It seems B-sidey. Oliver Stone in manic panic mode (NBK, Any Given Sunday) reminds me of Tony Scott. Which is why I prefer him when he's more subdued.

Yeah this definitely reminded me of a Tony Scott film.

[EyesWideOpen]

And I continue to be baffled that a film like this can be rated R (and fit to be watched by teenagers) yet Blue Valentine gets a NC-17 because of a scene of a guy going down on a girl.

[MadMan]

And I continue to be baffled that a film like this can be rated R (and fit to be watched by teenagers) yet Blue Valentine gets a NC-17 because of a scene of a guy going down on a girl.

Its the MPAA. I've stopped worrying or caring about their bullshit ratings a long time ago. This film probably got an R rating because of who directed it, and the amount of studio pull behind it. Blue Valentine being more of an indie release got screwed.

[NickGlass]

Hmm.

Hmmmm HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

[Henry Gale]

I thought this was an absolute mess, but that doesn't mean that I didn't think it had a lot of good stuff in it too.

It's just such a mish-mash of thematic ideas, storylines that dizzyingly intertwine (sometimes nicely, sometimes in increasingly exhausting and contrived ways), often purposely disjointed narrative framework, characters whose moralities push endless directions (even within single scenes), all illustrated with so much energy and imagery that's such a sharp, saturated, fluid, varied, collage of images that echo and exacerbate any given emotion injected into the frame from both in front of and behind the camera. It ranges from stuff that's outright beautiful to bits that are shockingly grotesque, but not enough of it is exactly uniquely weird enough or entertaining enough to work. (Seriously, one scene had such a specifically unsettling flourish of gore that I wasn't expecting that I just couldn't look at.)

And pretty much everyone in the cast, particularly Del Toro as the equally hilarious and frightening Lado, does really decent work here. Well, everyone except for maybe Blake Lively, which is a shame since she's so integral to both the allure and central conflict of the story both to the characters as ostensibly us as the audience. It's also the sort of movie that even at 130 minutes and such complicated plotting, I'm still not at all shocked when I learn that entire roles like Uma Thurman as Lively's character's mother were completely deleted for the final cut. Some of its other choices along the way could've probably been reworked or undone to better effect, even ones as integral as O's narration and how it eventually comes into play in the final act.

And much as it annoyed me to see Stone release so many versions of something like Alexander, something that also had bright spots amongst a much less worthwhile whole, Savages is the sort of piece of work that despite still feeling really long and not quite coming together for me in its theatrical edit, I would actually look forward to watching some other, even more bloated, assembly of everything it has in its screwed-up, jittery brain in the future.

As it stands, it's a worthwhile failure.

[Dukefrukem]

Opening line: "Just because I'm telling this story, doesn't mean I'm alive at the end of it." Is this the cheapest, laziest, way to deceive the audience in the history of cinema??

[Grouchy]

Eh, I wish someone had told me this was good. I'd have watched it sooner.

Seriously, really entertaining, pulpy thriller. Best movie I've seen from Oliver Stone in a good while. Some of my favorite scenes were with Hayek and Lively.