( EW.com ) -- `` Savages '' 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 . How liberated from an agenda is this movie ? It 's about two marijuana dealers in Laguna Beach who run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel , and the film has nothing at all to say about either undocumented immigrants or the war on drugs . Yet you can feel how alive Stone is to the material . He stamps every scene with his darkly combustible cinematic personality . Based on a novel by Don Winslow , `` Savages '' is grandiose underworld pulp staged with screw-tightening skill and a taste for nasty kicks that spills over into sadism and dread . It 's like a jacked-up `` Miami Vice '' told from the point of view of the criminals . The film is narrated , in a `` Sunset Boulevard '' -meets- '' Kill Bill '' way , by Ophelia ( Blake Lively ) , known as O , a free-spirited California blonde who lives with , and loves , two guys and is their anything-goes siren-goddess . Chon ( Taylor Kitsch ) , a scarred , sexy hunk of an Afghanistan war vet , is the tougher and more volatile of the men . His friend and business partner , the gentler Ben ( Aaron Johnson ) , is a wispy-bearded nihilist hippie . The two went into the drug game together with a crop of `` primo '' marijuana seeds that Chon smuggled back from Afghanistan after enlisting in the military for that purpose . They 've harvested those seeds into a greenhouse crop that yields weed with THC levels of 33 % ( the best high anyone 's ever had ) . But the popularity of their product threatens the cartel 's business , which is why the gangsters come calling like a vicious corporation that talks `` partnership '' when it means `` hostile takeover . '' Run by a ruthless matriarch ( Salma Hayek ) from her hacienda , the cartel issues a warning in the form of a creepy Internet video of a dungeon full of freshly decapitated victims . But Chon and Ben are too arrogant to know what they 're dealing with . So the gangsters kidnap O and place her in the dungeon , where they threaten to hack off her fingers . `` Savages '' is violent enough to risk turning off a portion of the audience . Yet even as the movie descends into blood-spattered exploitation , it 's revving up the suspense . When characters are threatened with stuff this brutal , you 'd better believe there 's something at stake . To get O back , Chon and Ben must become masterminds and warriors . They have to descend into savagery themselves . Stone presents some bravura set pieces , from a pulse-quickening encounter with a highway cop to an incendiary multivehicle heist to every scene with Benicio Del Toro as a very scary sociopath . As for Taylor Kitsch , he wipes away any lingering John Carter cobwebs with his explosive performance , and John Travolta is funny and desperate as a DEA agent up to his ears in slime . Exciting as it is , `` Savages '' does slide off the rails during the last half hour . The film goes from intense to indulgent , plausible to preposterous . But it 's still a pleasure to see Stone settle into this dark groove . B+ . See the full story at EW.com . CLICK HERE to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly . © 2011 Entertainment Weekly and Time Inc. All rights reserved .
` ` Savages '' is a tricky , amoral , down - and - dirty action thriller . It 's about three marijuana dealers in Laguna Beach who run afoul of a Mexican drug cartel . Although it 's action - packed , ` ` Savages '' does slide off the charts during the last half hour .