Savages

Director: Oliver Stone
Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, John Travolta, Demian Bichir, Emile Hirsch
Running Time: 131 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

Savages just might be the best recent example of how a misguided ending can help unravel a film brimming with greatness. That's not to say its entirely great up to that point, but it definitely has its patches, thanks in no small part to who's behind the camera. That Oliver Stone still manages to save this says a lot. But the best news just might be that the director's back in full U-Turn mode here, meaning that anyone who prefers the filmmaker who pedaled glorious trash like that and Natural Born Killers to the more politically inclined dramatist who gave us JFK, Nixon and Born on the Fourth of July, will find little to dislike. That the same man is responsible for all these is impressive in itself and in many ways makes him the ideal choice to adapt Don Winslow's best selling novel. It just might be the most fitting match of director and material in a long time, containing on paper all the combustible elements that should cement it amongst the year's best. Yet strangely, it isn't. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's merely just a well executed crime thriller, there's this inescapable feeling when it ends that I should have left wit more than I got. But it's entertaining as hell, features a few really wild performances, and is easy to imagine re-watching, even while taking little new away from each viewing. The movie is one giant distraction, but that's okay since it's tough to deny we're all in need some of those every once in a while, especially if it's this fun.

When a movie's opening line is, "Just because I'm telling you this story doesn't mean I'm alive at the end," it's a pretty good bet much will go down in the ensuing two hours. And it does. That possible tease is delivered by the film's narrator, a blond, tattooed California hippie named O./A.K.A. Ophelia (Blake Lively), who's living a charmed, laid back Laguna Beach lifestyle with her two successful pot growing boyfriends Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson). Chon, an Iraq War veteran, is the muscles who handles the dirty work while the more peace-loving Ben is the brains, using his brilliance as a botanist to turn their operation into the best in Southern California. It's so great that it's attracted the attention of a dangerous Mexican cartel headed by the cold, ruthless Elena Sanchez (Salma Hayek), whose men demand that they turn over a stake of their business or face serious consequences. Not wanting to make any waves, Ben wants to take the deal while the hot-headed Chon thinks they should take O. and flee to Indonesia as soon as possible. But under orders from Elena, the cartel's maniacal enforcer Lado (Benicio del Toro) kidnaps O. and the guys will have to play by their rules in order to see her returned to them alive. Their only hope might be their crooked DEA agent pal Dennis (John Travolta), who's clearly playing both sides of the fence while always looking out for number one.

The opening scenes do their job in establishing that Chon and Ben could qualify as two of the luckiest movie protagonists we've seen in a while. Just on principle, it's likely every straight male audience member could hate them from the get-go considering their biggest problem in life is deciding who gets to share the bed and bathtub with Blake Lively and on which day. Similarly, O's not making out too bad  herself, so it's an arrangement they're all understandably happy with until the cartel enters the picture, threatening not only their perfect hedonistic lifestyle, but all their lives. Especially O's. After a bit too much over-explanatory voiceovers and flashbacks to start, it turns out to be a credit to co-writer Stone and the actors that once the action gets going and all the narrative and visual flourishes are abandoned, we do develop a certain degree sympathy for characters who aren't exactly the easiest to sympathize with. Young, reckless, entitled and seemingly untouchable, all three are given a rude awakening when they realize they're in over their heads with these monsters.

The most interesting aspect of the film by far is the strange mother-daughter dynamic that develops between Elena and O., which starts bordering on a Stockholm Syndrome. Each seems to fill a void in the other, with captor starting to view her hostage as a surrogate for her estranged daughter and and O. looking to her as the parental figure she never had. All of this is very subtle and well written, mostly contained to a single sensational dining room scene where Elena questions whether O's seemingly perfect relationship with Chon and Ben really is as perfect as she thinks it is and whether their loyalty to each other trumps their feelings for her. Coming off her well-received supporting performance in The Town a couple of years ago, Lively impresses again in a worthy follow-up choice that definitely puts her through the wringer. I can't say another performer couldn't have done it better (maybe, maybe not), but she's completely believable in a performance that doesn't contain much depth, and doesn't need to since O's kind of a shallow of character to begin with.

Kitsch and Johnson are essentially playing polar opposites and do it well, so it's shame this was unfairly thrown in with John Carter and Battleship as another check in the loss column for Kitsch, since it represents exactly the kind of edgy supporting part he should be taking at this stage. And also probably the closest he's gotten to the brooding, quiet intensity he displayed as Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights. Johnson is probably the strongest presence of the three but it hardly matters since it's the actual "savages" that  really carry this, with Hayek tearing into her meatiest role in ages as the scary but somewhat sympathetic Elena, and del Toro emotionally unstable and terrifying in just about every minute of screen time he's given. Travolta has fun hamming it up as the crooked DEA agent, providing the movie with most of its comic relief.

Without giving too much away, the film hits a big stumbling block in its final act. It's one of those things that even those who worked on the picture would have a tough time justifying or explaining from a creative standpoint. There's what seems to be a beautiful, poetic ending and then they just pull the rug out to instead give us a far less satisfying conclusion. It's not so much this actual ending that's a problem but more the cheap, manipulative way it's presented and how unfairly it plays. Not knowing how true the screenplay is to Winslow's novel, my guess just watching it would be that the studio forced Stone to make last minute changes in fear of alienating audiences who might want to go home happy and smiling. You know, come skipping out the theater from a movie about drugs, sex, murder, and kidnapping that's titled Savages. As if audiences hadn't a clue what they got into. That it doesn't seem to be about any those things when it very much is, could be the film's greatest strength. And I'm still debating whether a better ending even would have necessarily made a huge difference. This is primarily about visceral thrills and its tough to deny Stone brings those in spades. Savages is junk food for sure, but at least it's quality junk food for an adult audience that's too often criminally underserved during the summer movie season.

Kick-Ass

Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Nicolas Cage, Mark Strong
Running Time: 114 min.
Rating: R

★★★ 1/2 (out of ★★★★)

The superhero, comic book satire Kick-Ass fully succeeds at what it's trying to accomplish just as long as you don't think too hard at what that is. But I didn't care. It's a glorious mess of a movie that's tonally all over the map, playing as both a laugh out loud comedy and a hard R-rated testosterone-fueled action vehicle, making it easy to see why it didn't connect with a mass audience. But it's also easy to see how those very same qualities help make it it work so well as I'm not sure this was intended for large-scale commercial consumption to begin with. During the first hour I was a little confused at the angle from which writer/director Matthew Vaughn was approaching the material and he does jam too much story in, but that's eventually cleared up as it comes together in thrilling ways.

Top to bottom to the casting and performances are rock solid right down to even the smallest, throwaway roles but there's only one that's downright astonishing, and it's all anyone will be talking about. Lost amidst all the controversy surrounding Hit Girl is the hard work it must have taken on the part of this young actress to give us 2010's most polarizing and memorable screen character. The only thing that would have held this adaptation of Mark Millar's 2008 comic book back would be pulling punches. Thankfully, Vaughn refuses to compromise and the result is a movie that will piss off some but entertain many more who can appreciate its dark humor.

The idea that superheroes can just be ordinary people wanting to help but also struggling with their own personal issues has been explored in films like Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Batman movies. Geeky teenager Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) has probably seen all of those multiple times and read the comics and now he's asking himself why no one has ever decided to become a real-life superhero. Barely existing at school and having absolutely no chance with his longtime crush, Katie (Lyndsy Fonseca), he orders a silly superhero costume from the internet and hits the streets, taking the law into his own hands. Unfortunately, he gets his ass kicked. A lot. When he becomes a worldwide You-Tube sensation after trying to save a victim from a gang attack, he adopts the masked identity of "Kick-Ass" and attracts the unwanted attention of mob boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) who sees him as major threat to his organization. But in the process he gains the appreciation and services of Damon and Mindy MacCready (Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz), father and daughter gun experts who when in costume transform into the crime fighting duo known as "Big Daddy" and "Hit Girl." Big Daddy harbors a personal grudge against D'Amico and isn't above using his vigilante daughter or Kick-Ass as a means of settling it. A fourth superhero, the goofy Red Mist (Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse) enters the picture as a potential sidekick with sneaky ulterior motives.

At first, it appears the primary focus of the film is supposed to be the evolution of this geek into the crime-fighting Kick-Ass, but Vaughn tries to cram a million different things in the first hour with the other two sub-plots before joining them so it seems to take a little bit to get there. Because of this the pacing initially seems sluggis as Vaughn lingers on the detailed origin story while cutting back and forth between the mob stuff and the father/daughter relationship (easily the most compelling story thread of the three). But it's impossible to complain since it all works and so much more is done right. The journey Dave takes isn't much different than Peter Parker's in the Spider-Man movies, only replacing the power and responsibility with bad luck. He's just a kid getting beat up every night in a silly costume who lands on the internet. This opens up an interesting commentary on how people are more than willing to watch and be entertained by real violence than make any any attempt to stop it themselves. That fact that's he's essentially just playing dress-up not only makes the film funnier, but adds suspense because he's always in legitimate danger.

But enough about him. The real reason to see the movie is Hit Girl played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who up until now was best known for playing the bluntly honest, wise-cracking little sister in (500) Days of Summer. This is that part with the volume amped up times two hundred. Nothing can fully prepare you for what she does here as a masked assassin every bit as dangerous and no less believable than Christian Bale in The Dark Knight or Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. It's hilarious, but also invites the question of whether the sight of an 11-year-old foul-mouthed murderer is disturbing even within the confines of satire. Yes it is, but it's supposed to make you uncomfortable and the fact that her father is not only raising a vigilante killer but destroying her childhood to settle a grudge and likely causing her irreversible psychological harm isn't ignored. Despite delivering her shocking dialogue (and beatings) with the poise and confidence of actors double her age as Hit Girl, it's that detail Moretz never ignores in her performance as Mindy.

You can just picture Quentin Tarantino sitting on his couch furiously sketching ideas for Kill Bill Vol. 3 with The Bride vs. Hit Girl, whose fight scenes are probably the most impressively choreographed we've seen on screen since those two films of Tarantino's. John Murphy's adrenaline-pumping score, as well as the other perfectly placed tracks from Joan Jett, Gnarls Barkley and The Prodigy only help to further fuel the energy level. While no one even comes close to matching Moretz, Cage gets second place, giving a performance inspired by Adam West from the 1960's Batman television series. Has there ever been a better inspiration for a part? Crazy Cage dressed as Batman. Playing it like Adam West. And it's just as insane as you'd imagine, earning the actor immunity from me ever writing a negative word about him again, and maybe even forgiveness for Ghost Rider and Next. While a small role, it finally answers that nagging question of how Cage would fare as a superhero, with the result being overwhelmingly favorable. This is him at his absolute best and a reminder just how great he can be when given a well-written character that fully capitalizes on his zaniness.

Relative newcomer Aaron Johnson would have made a likable Peter Parker if Tobey Maguire wasn't available and that's pretty much the role he's playing here. Surprisingly, the screenplay even finds a way to throw a clever, original twist into the usually tired superhero sub-plot of a geek pining after the hot, popular girl. And after this and Hot Tub Time Machine it seems as if Lyndsey Fonseca is now that go-to girlfriend these days in comedy, which is fine by me since she's really good at it. Even David's comic book obsessed friends (played by Clark Duke and Evan Peters) are actually funny, adding levity to the plot when needed without coming off as unnecessary filler. As Red Mist, Mintz-Plasse is basically McLuvin' in a costume and that's exactly what's called for in his part. The movie isn't perfect and at 114 minutes could have probably used an extra trim in the editing room since it feels slightly longer than that, but the performance of Moretz and the character of Hit Girl is the movie and everything else falls into place because of it.

I can't understand anyone getting bent out of shape that this is "morally reprehensible" or "goes too far," especially with an "R" rating clearly slapped on it and in a year where the majority of entertainment has been aimed at the PG crowd, with many options to choose from. No one's forcing anyone to see it. After a cruel bludgeoning of Twilight movies, cash-grabbing remakes, and 3D junk, we've earned at least one hardcore, balls-to-the wall movie that doesn't play it safe and Vaughn deserves his vision being released as it was intended without the morality police throwing a fit. It's a testament to how frighteningly believable Moretz is in the role that it's caused so much controversy. Hit Girl deserves her own movie and Kick-Ass earns its sequel, surpassing in quality many of the superhero films it's satirizing.