Category: john travolta

A sexy, gory, drug-infused novel gets a treatment worthy of the Oliver Stone of "Natural Born Killers" and "The Doors."

It’s been a while since Oliver Stone exercised his chops on something as juicy as “Savages,” Don Winslow’s novel about a pair of Laguna Beach pot growers waging war against a Mexican drug cartel that wants to buy their business.  What ought to be a straightforward negotiation becomes personal -- and very bloody -- when the Mexicans kidnap the girl whom the two California dudes share and love.  

With all the smoke and skin and violence, with dazzling cinematography by Dan Mindel, and with a pair of gleefully wicked performances by Salma Hayek as a drug lord and Benicio Del Toro as her henchman (kudos, too, to John Travolta as a corrupt federal agent), Stone seems truly to be enjoying himself for the first time in ages.  

The trio at the center of the film -- Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch -- are thoroughly credible as ironic innocents who find themselves in something deadlier than they could imagine.  Stone seems to take a little vicarious pleasure in making these relative lightweights squirm in fear and confusion.  He briskly navigates the Elmore Leonard-style twists of the story, and, as he did in films like “Salvador,” “Natural Born Killers” and “The Doors,” he transmits his hedonistic pleasure directly to the audience.  It’s nice to have that Oliver Stone back.
    
(125 min., R, multiple locations) Grade: B