‘Savages’: The Oliver Stone movie that Uma Thurman was cut from
Having emerged as one of the most prominent political filmmakers from the US, Oliver Stone has routinely generated a lot of conversations surrounding his work. While some have criticised Stone for providing a platform for unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, his films have also garnered acclaim for their portraits of important figures in world politics.
Stone extended his oeuvre in 2012 with Savages, an action thriller about the drug industry and the political structures associated with it on a global scale. It follows an ex-Navy Seal named Chon, who starts a marijuana business in Laguna Beach with his best friend, having smuggled special seeds from Afghanistan. However, their success attracts the wrong kind of attention and introduces them to a dangerous world.
During a conversation with Film Comment, Stone said: “There’s tremendous callousness in the country, and it destroys us, and in a strange way, Don Winslow caught that in his book with this idea of these soldiers becoming active here. In Vietnam, we always thought that we’d come back and we’d make a difference here in this country; we’d lead the revolution against Nixon. I love the idea that this kid Chon just takes things in his own fucking hands. He doesn’t go crying to the cops — there’s no cops to cry to… I loved that idea of war coming home to roost.”
In the film, both Chon and his best friend Ben are in an open relationship with a woman named O (played by Blake Lively), who gets kidnapped by the Mexican cartel. Initially, Jennifer Lawrence was considered for the role, but there were unsolvable scheduling conflicts. On the other hand, Uma Thuman did shoot multiple scenes as O’s mother, but all of them were ultimately removed from the final cut due to severe time constraints.
Stone added: “We also had scenes with Uma Thurman as the mother of O — they were good scenes that were funny, actually. But with the movie being two hours and ten minutes now, we were concerned. John Travolta’s character also had a wife, and there was a tender scene between them. And there was a very interesting side story with Lado, Benicio’s character — we had Mia Maestro as his wife, and we see that she is trying to make their children into Californians, and the kids disgust him because they don’t have any of the old-fashioned ways that he wants. But we had to let all that go.”
Looking back on the project, Thurman probably has no regrets about being removed from the final version because Savages is not one of Stone’s finest works. Complicated and uninspired in a lot of ways, it fails to fully utilise the potential of the narrative and remains a mediocre thriller by a director who has seen better days.
Watch the trailer below.
