Savages

Posted on July 5, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Oliver Stone’s new movie about drug dealers and drug users seems to assume that its audiences may be watching in an altered state of consciousness as well. Stone has never been known for subtlety, but just to make absolutely sure that everyone watching the film knows what is what, he makes a very clear distinction between our heroes and our villains. The good drug dealers are two guys and a girl who live together in an almost Edenic state of polyamorous bliss on Laguna Beach and donate money to African villages. The villains are the bad drug dealers, who chain-saw off the heads of seven people before the opening credits are over and are led by viciously evil Selma Hayek with a hairstyle that makes her look like a demented Veronica from the Archie Comics.

Our narrator cautions us that just because she is telling the story does not mean she is alive at the end of it. O (for Ophelia) is a California girl from a wealthy but dysfunctional family whose primary occupations are shopping and having sex with her two boyfriends. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is the muscle, a cynical former military guy. Ben (Aaron Johnson of “Kick-Ass”) is the idealistic botany/business guy. Together, O tells us, they make the perfect boyfriend, and they love each other, too, so it’s just one happy cuddle puddle.

But the very thing that makes them so successful — the exceptional quality of their weed — has made them a threat to the big, bad drug dealers from Mexico. When they make an offer Ben and Chon can’t refuse, Ben and Chon refuse anyway. They are willing to turn over the business but they are not willing to work for Elena (Hayek) and her group. So O gets taken hostage, and if Ben and Chon do not start cooperating, they will chop off her fingers.

When O and Elena have an elegant dinner and O starts prattling on about her failed effort at community college as though she is talking to her parents’ friends at the country club, we get a sense of the grand guignol possibilities of this story, based on novel by Don Winslow, who co-scripted. Hayek’s relish in the role is entertaining and John Travolta has a good turn as a paunchy FBI agent with no illusions. But Benicio de Toro’s portrayal of Elena’s sociopathic henchman is just icky. Stone’s re-re-re-treading of the same issues that have pre-occupied him since he was fighting in Vietnam — drugs, corruption, military, power — is tired. The butchery and dissolution of the bad guys is over the top and the heroes give us no reason to root for them. A final fake-out is an insult to any remaining goodwill left from the audience and the overall preposterousness finally feels like an insult.

Parents should know that this film has extremely graphic and disturbing violence including torture and rape, explicit sexual situations, nudity, drinking, smoking, extended drug use (marijuana and cocaine) and drug dealing, very strong language

Family discussion: Why do the different characters refer to each other as savages? Do you agree with the definition used at the end? What kept O, John, and Ben together?

If you like this, try: “American Gangster” and “Blow”

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W.

Posted on February 10, 2009 at 8:00 am

Maybe it is just too soon, maybe we are just too used to the high-gloss satire of “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” maybe it’s the kaleidoscopic structure, but this movie feels like a rough draft. Director Oliver Stone throws almost-randomly arranged scenes from the 43rd President’s life up on screen in an attempt at insight but too often it dissolves into caricature.

It begins promisingly with a defining moment for the George W. Bush presidency, or at least a moment intended to be defining. In an Oval Office meeting, W. (Josh Brolin) and his top advisors are debating the terminology they will use to explain the President’s view — literally — of the world in his first State of the Union address in January 2002, just months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. How to describe our enemies? They settle on “axis of evil.” And we get acquainted with the cast of characters who will be portraying the headline names — Jeffrey Wright as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Scott Glen as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Toby Jones as Senior Advisor and political strategist Karl Rove, and Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney. A strong beginning is diminished as the characters are introduced because the audience is distracted by the effort of determining which actors do the best job of look and sound like the real-life characters they portray (that would be Newton and Dreyfuss) and which look and sound nothing whatsoever like their characters (Glen).

Then we get some flashbacks to unroll the well-known story of President Bush’s misspent youth, the drinking, the partying, the series of failed careers. Brolin gives a thoughtful performance, but the superficiality of the assessment of Bush as a man (trying to both please and do better than his father) and as a leader (there is not enough here to understand his policies or priorities) give the film an uncertain tone, sometimes verging on satire, sometimes sinking to melodrama, sometimes showing flashes of farce, especially when almost every scene shows him chomping on a sandwich or when Rice murmurs support for everything the President says. Why give us Bush choking on a pretzel? Then why have it a second time?

Elizabeth Banks gives a warm and appealing performance as Laura Bush, Ellen Burstyn is fiery as Barbara Bush, and Dreyfuss has Cheney’s steely purr down perfectly. The movie ambitiously tries to make President Bush appear more overmatched than cynical or incompetent. There are hints of hubris but Stone does not doubt the sincerity of Bush’s intentions or the merits of his aspirations. But there are too many characters and the events are glossed over too quickly. It’s very tempting to make it a metaphor for the Bush Presidency — unclear in direction and suffering from attention deficit disorder. But ultimately, it is just a movie, and despite moments of value finally an unsuccessful one.

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Based on a true story Biography Drama

Alexander

Posted on November 20, 2004 at 6:06 am

Alexander the person was great. “Alexander” the movie is not.

It is a horrendously bad movie, a genuine 40-car pile-up of literally epic proportions, a three-way head-on collision of bad writing, bad acting, and bad direction. It is not just misguided, it is truly terrible in a way that is almost fascinating to watch. But not quite.

It begins with Anthony Hopkins as the aged Ptolemy, intoning the historical background for us. It’s true that Anthony Hopkins has a voice that could make the phone book mesmerizing. But the phone book would be an improvement over the turgid prose he is asked to slog through here. And he keeps coming back to tell us more; invariably throughout the next three hours we are told what we should be shown while we watch what we should have been told. Even with all of the narration and a fairly straightforward historical plotline, the narrative is frustratingly muddled.

Alexander (Colin Farrell) is the son of Philip (Val Kilmer) and Olympias (Angelina Jolie) and at the center of a firestorm of political intrigue and bitter personal feuds. His parents despise each other, and each urges Alexander to be bold and to trust no one. Alexander grows up to be very competitive but also sensitive. He tames the wild horse Bucephalus, gaining his father’s approval. But then Philip, who wants to make Olympias less powerful, takes another wife. He is about to name her infant son his successor when he is assassinated, making Alexander the king.

Alexander takes his armies on a quest to conquer the known world over eight years and 22,000 miles, and we finally get to the one watchable part of the movie. Writer/director Oliver Stone can stage a battle. The fights with the soldiers of Persia and India are striking and the confrontation between horse- and elephant-riders is exceptional.

But the rest of the movie is dreadful, a mish-mash of a clunker script delivered in a mish-mash of accents. It’s bad enough when one of the Greek soldiers speaks with the actor’s own Scottish burr. It is even worse when Roxane (Rosario Dawson), the wife Alexander choses from Bactria, uses the kind of faux all-purpose foreign pronunciation usually reserved for native maidens in 1940’s B-movies set on tropical islands. She sees him with Hephaestion (Jared Leto) and hisses “You love chhHEEEM!!”

The accents may be all over the place, but the Classic Comic-style dialogue is consistently terrible. No accent could make these lines work: “You must never confuse your feelings with your duties!” “Your life hangs in the balance!” “You can run to the ends of the earth, you coward, but you will never run far enough!” “We are most alone when we are with the myths.” “It was here that Alexander made one of his most mysterious decisions.” “They forgive you because you make them proud of themselves!” “What have I done to make you hate me so?” “You’re a king — act like one!” “I wouldn’t miss it for all the gold in the world!” “It’s easier to find the east than to find love.” “The dreamers destroy us. They must die before they can kill us with their blasted dreams.”

The script is way, way, way over the top and the acting is wildly over-heated, with moments that give Showgirls competition for combined insanity and inanity. The wedding night scene alone is enough to land the film a choice spot in the Bad Movie Hall of Fame. Alexander and Roxane roll over and over, hissing at each other like angry cats.

The classroom discussions of higher love between men and the longing glances and meaningful exchanges between Alexander and Hephaestion play like a soap opera written by middle schoolers.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is that there is not one performance with any authenticity or appeal. Even Farrell and Jolie lose all sense of perspective and resort to snorts and eye-rolling histrionics.

All of this is further weighed down by pacing that manages to be both slow and choppy. A flashback of Philip’s death is awkwardly inserted at a point that feels entirely random. There are too-frequent and heavy-handed symbols: caged beasts and a soaring eagle. We get it, we get it.

Ultimately, “Alexander” is the story of hubris. In this case, however, it is not the hubris of the young king who wanted to conquer the world, but the hubris of a writer-director who tried to tell the story and threw everything into it he could think of — including an indefensible rip-off of the opening of Citizen Kane — but completely left out class, dignity, and quality. Perhaps the best explanation for complete failure of this movie in every category is is the revenge of the gods.

Parents should know that the movie has extreme and explicit battle violence with many impalings and other graphic injuries. Alexander is portrayed as bi-sexual. There are very explicit heterosexual sexual situations and references and male and female nudity, plus references and implications of gay sex and some same-sex kissing and a mother-son kiss on the mouth and an attempted rape. Some exotic dancers perform in skimpy attire. Characters drink, sometimes to excess.

Families who see this movie should talk about Alexander’s influences. What did he learn from his father and what did he learn from his mother? Why did he marry Roxane? What was most important to him? What is best remembered about him? Why?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy the much better Gladiator and the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. They might also like to take a look at the 1956 Alexander the Great, with Richard Burton in the title role. A guide to the many websites about Alexander can be found here. There are also many books about Alexander. A good place to start is Alexander the Great by Robin Lane Fox. Younger readers will appreciate Alexander the Great – A Novel by Nikos Kazantzakis.

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