The story here is ok, but the cast is pretty good. Everything feels good- action, scenery and sound. But nothing is special about it. And who in their right mind would share Blake Lively? There were two endings, and I believe I preferred the first one because it fit the tone and title better.

I watched the movie after reading many bad comments about it and after having already watched some really good cartel movies. I don't think Oliver Stone wanted to give us a gruesome cartel thriller. Yes, there were some bloody or merciless scenes but they only formed a small portion of the movie and did not distort the general entertaining mood of the movie, which I believe was Oliver Stone's real intention. He threaded it a bit lightly and kept the movie quite entertaining. This is what I would call a laid-back cartel movie that offers you a bit of everything: Love, sex, violence, excitement, revenge. People criticized the young actors too harshly here but that might be caused by their being overshadowed by veteran actors. Come on, how can you keep up with Benicio:) One thing I agree with other reviewers was that there was not any chemistry Ben, Chon and O (Blake) that makes you believe they are actually in love, but didn't it eventually turn out that their love was not real anyway? Oliver made you feel that there was something missing in their relationship from the beginning. Still, when you are finished with the movie, you end up feeling something was missing and that you are not fully satisfied. Yet, what made this movie so special to me was the mind-blowing performance of Benicio Del Toro as Lado. Oh my. He was phenomenal. He looks such a good mannered cool guy in real life that it is so hard to believe he can play such a psycho but he really plays it so well, makes you believe that he is that bad, and makes you love him anyway. It has been a couple of days since I watched the movie, and his scenes keep playing in my mind on a loop. I think this was one of his best performances, and I can watch this movie all over again simply to watch him. But would I rate this movie 8 out 10 without him? Probably not. I would probably give a 5 star if Benicio was not in it. So Kudos to Oliver Stone for giving us one of the most phenomenal bad guys on the silver screen. On a final note, I really loved the colors in this movie. As a foreigner, it made me jump on the first plane to see California. All in all, it is an entertaining movie with some great performances.

This was a cracking film. The cast is just fantastic; there are plenty of younger stars, but the big three, Hayek, Travolta and Del Toro are electric, even though the story isn't exactly centred around them, when they appear it's first rate, Saturday night entertainment - action, guns, violence and good old American, 1980s, Christian morals thrown in for good measures. The title is god awful, even given the theme of the film (no spoilers here), it doesn't make any sense to me that they'd call the film Savages - Beautiful Savages maybe. Any way, apart from that minor criticism there is nothing about the actual film that is half-baked or ill conceived - it rocks from start to finish and sees Oliver Stone return to true form, who has had some belters, but he's had some utter doozers too, Savages comes under the former.

What we have here is a Mexican cartel drug thriller from director Oliver Stone. What could go wrong with that? The film is dripping with sun-bleached style, and there's plenty of violence and sex in the mix. A shame, then, that the script is so very predictable and makes huge and continuous mistakes throughout, leaving this a failure of a movie.The first problem with the film is the entire lack of likable characters. Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch are the most vapid and unlikeable leads ever; they follow in the line of the usual pothead dummy heroes (as in American ULTRA and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) and I hated both of them from the very beginning. Blake Lively's character is rubbish, a typical air-head blonde, and the viewer is forced to sit through her extended screen time for no little reason other than to pad the story out.Which leads me into the running time: this is way too long for what should be a tense and exciting thriller. Lots of it feels repetitive or boring. There are a few action highlights, but the overall mood is artificial and long-winded. John Travolta gives the best performance in his minor role as a corrupt drugs agent, but check out Salma Hayek's cartel boss; she's surprisingly terrible. And I'm still not sure what to make of Benicio del Toro's character, and I don't think the scriptwriters knew what to do with him either...