Trailer of the Week: Savages

A brief rundown of the film trailer catching our eye this week...

What is it?

A big screen version of Don Winslow’s best-seller about two Californian marijuana growers who are wooed – then targeted – by Mexican drug dealers. Oliver Stone directs.

Does it look any good?

It certainly looks different from anything Oliver Stone has made in a while. Earnestness is out, over-the-top comic book villainy is in. Salma Hayek is an ice-cold crime boss, Benicio del Toro a scary hardman, and John Travolta is in there too as a federal agent. The good guys are Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch, with Blake Lively as a hippy who’s in a relationship with both of them, and gets kidnapped for her troubles. Judging by the trailer, this is the fast-cutting, ultraviolent Oliver Stone of Natural Born Killers.

No heavy-handed lectures about political conspiracies, war or the media, then?

No, judging by the trailer. In fact it looks quite fun, if you like violent films about good-guy drug dealers v bad-guy drug dealers. Salma Hayek is the most promising thing so far, as a character who looks like the result of a tryst between Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and Darth Vader. “Let me remind you that if I had to I wouldn’t have a problem cutting both their throats,” she tells Lively, while the two of them eat dinner in her swish modern mansion.

When’s it out?

28 September.