- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
88At the confluence of altered states and state-sanctioned violence, this drug-fueled thriller is Stone's most successfully provocative picture since "JFK."
-
88A return to form for Stone's dark side, Savages generates ruthless energy and some, but not too much, humor.
-
83Savages 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.
-
80Stone is generally given to deep thinking -- eternal fates are on the line. Not only does that lend the riveting and intense Savages a certain gravity, but it's also what separates his film from, say, your favorite Guy Ritchie movie. Here, we find an appealing depth amid the appalling violence.
-
80The violence is graphic, the dialogue can be awfully arch and the style is often mannered, but this long, dense adventure takes surprising side trips into thoughtfulness, ruefulness, whimsy and romance. It's high-grade entertainment sustained by a buoyant spirit.
-
80Stone relies on his leads to guide us into this hyper-charged inferno, and they fit his juiced-up approach like James Woods and Woody Harrelson did in Stone's equally hopped-up "Salvador" and "Natural Born Killers." He gets us high on what they're selling before it goes south.
-
80This 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.
-
80Savages is one of Stone's best movies with a ménage et trois love story giving some human dimension to its three young leads.
-
80Savages 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.
-
75Despite its excesses, Savage" is never unintentionally funny, just gritty and mean. The run time is more than two hours, yet it's also tight: no drag, no waste, no message.
-
75Stone seems to take a little vicarious pleasure in making these relative lightweights squirm in fear and confusion.
-
75Savages is Oliver Stone's strongest work in years - a stylish, violent, hallucinatory thriller with both a mean streak and a devilish sense of humor.
-
75From 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.
-
70The film is impressive. It has a bit of the cinematic whoop-de-doo of his noxious "Natural Born Killers," in which serial killers became existential heroes, celebrated for attaining absolute freedom.
-
70Savages is enjoyable in a way that's almost but not quite intentional camp; it's like eating a dinner made by a 7-year-old, with cake for every course, interspersed with Jell-O, Pepperidge Farm goldfish and chocolate sprinkles.
-
70Stone is also a director who has often felt that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, and his weakness for bloody excesses of all sorts undermines much of his good work. You might not think that a motion picture called Savages could be too violent, too savage, but you would be wrong.
-
70Savages is a daylight noir, a western, a stoner buddy movie and a love story, which is to say that it is a bit of a mess. But also a lot of fun, especially as its pulp elements rub up against some gritty geopolitical and economic themes.
-
70Savages isn't great cinema, but it's a very alive movie about people who probably ought to be dead.
-
70Savages represents at least a partial resurrection of the director's more hallucinatory, violent, sexual and, in a word, savage side.
-
67Savages isn't about anything except flashily directed mayhem. In this nest of vipers, it's the slitheriest varieties that survive – at least for a time.
-
Jul 4, 201267Like "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" and "W.," Savages feels like Stone softballing something he should be skewering - in this case, SoCal entitlement and faux-progressive hypocrisy.
-
67There's so much that's so right in Oliver Stone's dizzying new crime thriller that its impediments stick out like speed bumps. You'll know you've hit one when your vertiginous sense of WTF screeches to a manageable – and much duller – pace.
-
67Stone's uneven direction veers from near-amateurish genre antics to an enjoyable awareness of those same standards.
-
63Savages is a B-movie striving for an A-plus, a decadently energetic summer escape with bloody action, bold visuals and bodacious attitude to burn.
-
Sep 1, 201260Savages is punishing in places, but there are enough colourful characters and careening twists to make it worth the effort.
-
55Stone's moralism, coupled with discreet but bloody beatings, shootouts and all manner of tawdry goings on, rings hollow. The picture is neither entertaining nor preachy – it is simply very loudly meh.
-
50So why does Savages feel so calculated, cutesy, free of suspense and trashy only in the uninteresting sense? No doubt, Stone is trying... but it all feels more like flexing atrophied muscles rather than creating a believable experience.
-
50Savages comes off as director Oliver Stone trying to rekindle his "Natural Born Killers" mojo from 1994. But when the bigger-name stars show up here in cartoonish roles, things feel more silly than gritty.
-
50Who knows if it was Del Toro's idea, or Stone's, but at a particularly crucial - and criminal - moment, as a very bad thing is about to occur, the actor twirls his mustache menacingly, like a Mexican Snidely Whiplash. Yes, Savages is that kind of story.
-
50The true schism here, however, is between the brainless fun of the action plot and Stone's cheap exploitation of the cartels' real-life sadism.
-
50It's not as if Stone is above this sort of pulp. But as rejiggered for the movies, Savages has trouble making us care what happens to the beautiful people - the untouchables - at the center of the sun-baked fairy tale.
-
Jul 3, 201250Soul 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.
-
40What could have been an effective excoriation of US drug policy and a proper look at the violence inherent in the trade is wasted on a simplistic thriller that offers very little, especially given who is behind the camera. Sorry if that harshes anyone's buzz.
-
40This 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.
-
38While his classic hyperbolic visual style is back in force, Stone can't bother to muster any of his usual righteous anger, instead mischanneling his discontent into a kind of zen acceptance of these perpetually tiresome main characters.
-
30If the rest of the movie had been on Travolta's level of sly knowingness, it might have been a hip classic, rather than what it is -- a summertime debauch. [23 July 2012, p. 81]
-
25These are neither good people nor interesting savages, and they're not worth caring about. Neither is the movie.
-
25An amoral mosaic of carnage and carnality.
-
25Aggressively, defiantly stupid.
-
20Sadly, Savages plays up to Stone's worst tendencies: machismo, bombast and self-indulgence, and the factor that could conceivably have made this movie tolerable – humour – is off the menu.
-
0So. What part of this is boring? All of it.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 30 out of 46
-
Mixed: 6 out of 46
-
Negative: 10 out of 46
-
To open this review I