Savages

I didn't end up enjoying Savages as much as I hoped. I think, based on the review I sort of listened to on the radio, I was expecting something slightly lighter in tone. That the abduction in response to the first abduction would be sort of funny? That wasn't an accurate projection of what it would be like at all.

I don't understand the fake out, everybody dies ending. Because they figured that was what people want/expect? If so, i guess they're right, because I preferred the fake out ending to the real ending. I was more invested in seeing Lado (Benicio del Toro) get his comeuppance than I was in seeing Ben, Chon, and O (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively) have a happy ending. Not that I didn't like those three, I just really wanted Lado to end up dead. He doesn't, because he's working with the DEA.

I'm sure the movie is trying to make a point about the pointlessness of the war on drugs. They prosecute, unless the person is useful to them, in which can he can be a sadistic butcher like Lado and it's fine. But I already knew the war on drugs was a monumental waste of time.

I don't understand the management structure between Ben and Chon. Chon wants to kill the middle management guys Elena sent with the offer of partnership. Ben says no way, and so they don't. But Chon doesn't agree with Ben's idea of making a counteroffer, or the real idea of leaving the country. Why can't he veto Ben's idea? Or maybe I should ask, why doesn't he? The ex-SEALS are his buddies, they'll shoot or not on his command. I guess he figured Ben needed to learn for himself who they were dealing with, though the videos of decapitations ought to have taken care of that.

One of the things that bugged me for a time was that the movie takes Ben, who has what O describes as a "Buddhist" view of things, live and let live, non-confrontational, and makes him do all this horrible stuff. Frame a man as a snitch. Light said man on fire. Kidnap drug kingpin's daughter, stash her in an industrial freezer. It starts to feel like a crappy '70s Western, where the guy who believes in law and order is treated as a chump in comparison to the ruthless badass who knows it's all about violence and brutality. Chon said they needed to respond with force to keep from being walked over, and oh look, Chon was right.

What mitigated this for me was the way the real ending played out. There's a strong suggestion that things like that don't have to change who you are forever. if you wanted to be the guy to make cheap solar panels, you still can. You just have to light a guy on fire first. I don't know if it's quite as simple as that - certainly Chon's difficulty in coming to grips with his experiences in the military suggest it isn't - but it's a more hopeful idea than simply suggesting that once you flip the switch to "kill", you can't ever flip it off again.