Avis Metacritic

Savages is Oliver Stone doing what he should have done a long time ago: making a tricky, amoral, down-and-dirty crime thriller that's blessedly free of any social, topical, or political relevance.

Savages never quite captures the novel's diamond-hard sarcasm, it offers other satisfactions in its visceral immediacy, its overriding sense of danger and a clutch of performances that, whatever one's reservations about the characters, can't help but court the viewer's emotional investment.

Savages is one of Stone's best movies with a ménage et trois love story giving some human dimension to its three young leads.

This is, in fact, one of the more violent movies in recent memory. But Stone doesn't let anyone off easy. Violence has an effect here, has meaning, has relevance to the story. And that's a good thing; otherwise, it would be hard to stomach.

From an acting standpoint, Blake Lively makes a compelling case that she doesn't have what it takes to play this sort of a role; she lacks the chops to carry the elements of the movie in which she is expected to dominate.

Savages represents at least a partial resurrection of the director's more hallucinatory, violent, sexual and, in a word, savage side.

Stone's uneven direction veers from near-amateurish genre antics to an enjoyable awareness of those same standards.

Soul is something Savages has in short supply, not least because Kitsch and Johnson register as blanks on-screen. In contrast, Hayek and del Toro, both sporting apparently intentionally terrible wigs, give big, scenery-chewing performances and earn our interest and empathy even while committing heinous acts.

This time, Stone is just sloshing around in the shallow end. When John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro show up for extended, cartoonish dialogues, you'll wonder what year it is, and let out a sigh of relief that the moment is long gone.

Aggressively, defiantly stupid.