ferenc_molnar

Stone has made a gaudy crime drama that meanders around for much of its first hour and then springs into action during the second. The film does get better as it goes on but it's not much fun. There is a good deal of suspense that borrows from the sexual-sadistic thrills of films like "Saw" or "Hostel". It's true that Mexican drug cartels employ techniques of persuasion that make films like "Hostel" look pretty tame by comparison. But the suspense in "Savages" could use a little more seduction and a lot less visual shocks and jolting sound fx to keep its audience engaged. There are enjoyments to be had in Stone's film, mostly from Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro and John Travolta's different takes on the human foibles of adult corruption. Hayek and Del Toro are particularly good and a pleasure to watch. The three younger actors, Kitsch, Johnson and Lively are lovely ciphers. The screenplay includes enough of Winslow's novel to give the story some writerly dimension and humor. Stone's contribution appears to have been in illustrating the fragments of Winslow's novel in dazzling, sensual and gaudy camera work and staging.

Some good performances, particularly Mark Prudkin as Fyodor Pavlovich, but the film's overbearing theatricality works against the drama of Dostoevsky's novel. The staginess is also not supported by the production design so the storm and stress performances feel ill matched to their realistic backgrounds. There's not much of a cinematic style to the film either and what there is is rather unimaginative. There's very little humor in the film for an adaptation of a novel that can be deeply and unsettlingly funny. And then there's the strange, wrong headed casting of Andrey Myagkov as Alyosha, arguably the central point of view of the novel. Myagkov's Alosha is a doltish void, somewhat of a holy fool, a characterization that might be found in other Dostoevsky novels but not in this one. All in all, a disappointment, not as embarrassing as the Yul Brenner adaptation but just as vulgar in its own way.

Not an easy thing to do but the great screenwriter Charles Brackett (and co) and the director Robert Z. Leonard get the speed, the slightly demented humor and, amazingly enough, the knowing social commentary lying underneath the jokes. There's a line up of superb character actors with Eric Blore giving what must be his greatest "gentleman's gentleman" performance. It's a comic performance that is both delightfully silly and surprisingly complex. When he mistakenly tells his master that he loves him, it's believable on a number of levels. And his terror in encountering America's lack of concern with the British class system is beautifully played. One can quibble with Madge Evans as the leading lady. She's game and likable enough but neither enough of an actress to create ample character shadings for interest nor enough of a movie star to command with a variety of facial expressions. But Robert Montgomery's leading man makes up for the unbalance.