Savages

MOVIE TITLE: Savages

GENRE: Crime Thriller

RATING: R for graphic violence, gore, language, and sexual content (including rape)

GRADE: Pass

In the beautiful sunset strip of California, life is equally beautiful for Ophelia and her two lovers, a marine named Chon and a pacifist named Ben. The three of them grow marijuana out of their own greenhouse, peddle it, and smoke it while having the most mind-blowing sex imaginable. If life was really this heavenly 24/7, then Savages would have been a soft snooze fest.

It so happens a Mexican cartel run by the ruthless Elena Sanchez wants a cut of Chon, Ben, and Ophelia’s profits. When the cartel doesn’t get what they want, they kidnap Ophelia and bend the wills of Chon and Ben by threatening to kill and torture her. The two marijuana dealers have to pull every favor they’ve banked to both do business with and fight back against the cartel.

If you know anything about how brutal Mexican cartels can be, then you can appreciate the difficulty level of what Chon and Ben are trying to achieve. These gangsters will slash, rape, shoot, and immolate their way to a higher profit and they don’t care whose blood they spread across the desert sands. The title Savages could be a reference to the violence and hatred Elena Sanchez’s cartel brings to every battle.

Or the title Savages could refer to what Chon and Ben must become in order to do combat with these mafia thugs and live to tell about it. If the latter is the case, then they can’t just be an ex-marine and a lover-boy respectively; they have to be homicidal lunatics with their business and combat tactics. All of this gore and all of these guts over a beautiful woman who doesn’t deserve the draconian living conditions she’s placed under.

There are many reasons why somebody would like this movie. If you have a fetish for gore, that’s one reason. If you like to be frightened, the cartel gangsters can hook you up (maybe that’s not the best figure of speech). If you like a good story where the lead characters have to go through hell in order to earn their happy ending, then goddamn it, Savages has all of that for you. If you want to see some hardcore sex scenes, then Savages could be an iffy deal for you since the consensual scenes are brief and the rape scenes are disgusting. If you take a huge interest in gang culture, then this movie will give you paranoid thoughts about moving to either California or Mexico.

There’s something in this movie for everybody provided they’re at least 18 years old and are not genetically predisposed to psychological trauma. The chain whippings, blood splatters, fiery explosions, eyeball pops, limb slashes, body burnings, forced sex, and even Elena Sanchez’s slap across Ophelia’s face can all attest to how important movie ratings are.