Take away the violence, mostly gratuitous, the sex scenes, a lot of needless voice over and this 2 hour and 10 minute movie would be an hour shorter and faster. Oliver Stone is out to prove that all people are evil, in other words savages, and in his directing appears to be the most savage of all.

The story takes place in Laguna Beach plus other areas of Southern California and North Mexico, with some beautiful shots of the Laguna Beach coast. The film goes out to the desert for stunning vistas but people and gunfire keep on messing it up. It as if Oliver Stone is trying to make up for all the violence he couldn’t show when he wrote the screenplay for “Scarface” and not directing it.

He is back in the drug scene introducing us to  Ben (Aaron Johnson) and his boyhood friend Chon (Taylor Kitsch) who are partners in a pot growing business that was started with the seeds Chon brought back from his stint in the service in Iraq and turned out to be the best pot available in the world. Not only are they sharing the business they are also sharing  O (Blake Lively), short for Ophelia, in a mutual all love each other relationship. Due to their success a Mexican cartel owner, Elena (Salma Hayek) wants to cut into their business. Elena has a daughter Magda, (Sandra Echeverria) and an evil henchman Lado (Benicio Del Toro) who hasn’t met a violent act he doesn’t like whether it is setting a man on fire or removing heads with a chainsaw. Along with the characters already mentioned there is Alex (DemianBichir)Elena’s lawyer and Dennis (John Travolta) a drug enforcement officer working both sides of the fence with a dying wife who needs the marijuana to lessen her pay.

Oliver Stone directed the film, and also had a hand in writing it, with Shane Salerno and Don Wilson, with too many choppy scenes and as many repulsive inducing scenes such as vomiting, a man being tortured with his eye dangling from its socket, just to mention two of them and there are many.

The best performances are by Del Toro who sends up being pure evil and Travolta who knows how to work savages of all stripes. The male leads Kitsch and Johnson are believable opposites who work well together and Hayek looks, and acts, bored with the whole thing. Lively is too bland to be believable as the lover of two men.

This is an R rated movie and deservedly so if for nothing else the violence

On a personal note I lived in Laguna Beach in the 1950s and though its coastline is recognizable nothing else is what I remembered.