Movie Review: One Battle After Another (2025)

Genre: Action Thriller  

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson  

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti  

Running Time: 162 minutes  

Synopsis: Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) are lovers and members of the far-left revolutionary group "French 75". They conduct operations to free detained illegal immigrants, and in one of their raids Perfidia humiliates military officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). He develops an intense hatred towards the group while also lusting after Perfidia, who is soon pregnant. After giving birth to Willa she is arrested and the rest of the group members flee into hiding, with Bob looking after Willa as his daughter. Sixteen years later Lockjaw has reasons to find Willa (Chase Infiniti), triggering a mad pursuit and forcing the reluctant Bob back into action.

What Works Well: This is a high energy chase thriller, powered by an edgy political and racial premise, memorable characters, spiky humour, and an original, tense and pulsing music soundtrack. Writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson pokes fun at left and right alike, anti-government revolutionaries devolving into potheads and right-wing nut-cases wallowing in contradictions. With no middle ground, the future available to Willa is grim, as she awakens to a mother who turned traitor, a father lacking any motivation, and worst of all, she's the only high school kid not allowed a cell phone. Teyana Taylor is a force of nature as Perfidia, and the film is poorer when she is sidelined, but Benicio Del Toro fills the gap as an unflappable martial arts instructor.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is beyond bloated, with lax editing resulting in almost every scene running well longer than needed. And all the extra time is invested in stylistic extensions rather than the human condition: the main characters barely progress in outlook, understanding, or self-awareness.

Key Quote:

Lockjaw (in a meeting with white nationalists): Gentlemen, I have engaged the enemy face to face in battle, and in the dark alleys and shadows of espionage. I was once raped in reverse.

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Movie Review: The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Wes Anderson  

Starring: Benicio Del Torro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch 

Running Time: 101 minutes  

Synopsis: In the Balkan region of the 1950s, wealthy arms dealer and industrialist Anatole "Zsa-Zsa" Korda (Benicio Del Torro) hatches a scheme to profit from a grand infrastructure project in Phoenicia, all while dodging a series of assassination attempts. He initiates a rapprochement with his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun, to help him complete the project, but Korda's enemies manipulate the stock market, leaving him short of funds. To close the gap, Korda, Liesl and Norwegian tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) travel to meet with investors, hoping to dupe them into increasing their funding.

What Works Well: Wes Anderson's tableau artistry is on full view, in service of a ruthless but charismatic tycoon on a journey to rescue the deal of his life. The vivid colours, geometric scene structures, and deadpan performances create a mid-century vibe of wealth, power, negotiations, and manipulation, all infused with a less-than-serious undertone. The more thoughtful moments allow Korda and Liesl to poke at their past, his record as a father, her devotion to religion, and the headaches of reconciling nefarious capitalism with divine teachings. Benicio del Toro holds the centre as a parade of stars animate secondary roles.

What Does Not Work As Well: After a strong start, the narrative quickly loses steam and dissolves into aimless repetition. The meetings with investors are obsessed with muddled minutiae for its own sake, sacrificing the big picture for trinkets and gimmicks. Black and white flashforwards to Korda's date with destiny add little of value, while conversely the complex history between Korda, Liesl, and her mother is chewed over but never shown. The apparently key character of Uncle Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives too late to counterbalance Korda's dominance.

Key Quote:

Korda: Myself, I feel very safe.

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Movie Review: Reptile (2023)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Grant Singer

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian, Frances Fisher 

Running Time: 136 minutes

Synopsis: In New England, real estate agent Summer (Matilda Lutz) is brutally murdered. Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio Del Toro) questions Summer's boyfriend Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), who runs a successful real estate agency with his mother Camille (Frances Fisher). The other suspects include Summer's ex-husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman); and Eli Phillips (Michael Carmen Pitt), a neighbour who holds a grudge against the Gradys. DNA evidence appears to identify the perpetrator, but Nichols and his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) uncover clues pointing to a more insidious conspiracy.

What Works Well: The measured and well-marinated crime mystery unfolds at a deliberate pace, anchored by a weathered Benicio Del Toro performance and enriched by well-rounded characters and background depth. Director and co-writer Grant Singer colours-in life's details, including Tom's shady career background, his square dancing hobby, kitchen renovations project, complicated relationship with other detectives (including Eric Bogosian and Domenick Lombardozzi), and quietly tempestuous reactions to Judy's flirting. Short and sharp action sequences punctuate an otherwise cerebral focus on people and places.

What Does Not Work As Well: The substantial time invested in mood and details does not extend to the broad-brushed plot fundamentals. As Nichols pushes deeper into the web of deceit, the criminal roles and responsibilities remain blurry and hampered by absent antagonist voices, ultimately undermining the carefully constructed narrative foundations.

Conclusion: Elaborate packaging overwhelms less-developed substance.



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Movie Review: No Sudden Move (2021)

A slow-burning crime thriller packed with characters, No Sudden Move delivers a stellar neo-noir mood despite a surplus of plot.

Detroit, 1954. Small-time gangster Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle) has managed to antagonize rival gang leaders Frank Capelli (Ray Liotta) and Aldrick Watkins (Bill Duke). Eager for cash, he accepts an assignment from go-between Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) for a seemingly simple job. Curt along with enforcers Ron Russo (Benicio del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin) are to hold hostage the family of General Motors accountant Matt Wertz (David Harbour) to force him into stealing a file from the safe of his boss Forbert.

No one is supposed to get hurt, but the plan goes awry. Curt and Ron team-up, determined to find out who intended to double-cross them and why the contents of the safe were so important. Detective Joe Finney (Jon Hamm) gets involved, while Curt and Ron stumble upon high-level corporate secrets and plenty of opportunities to make money, but only if they can survive each other and the many gangsters now in pursuit.

Written by Ed Solomon and directed by Steven Soderbergh with beautiful period details but unnecessary fish-eye lens stunt cinematography, No Sudden Move is a cerebral incursion into multi-layered heist criminality. The film demands and rewards attention and curiosity as competing agendas weave multiple underworld types into a tangle. The abundance of people and incidents deserves a longer running time than the available 115 minutes, and while Soderbergh just about manages to keep the material under control, the final act threatens to over-reach and sacrifices contentment for hurried scampering to the next twist.

In classic noir style, every character has an angle aiming at self-benefit, either obvious or covert, and trust is a rare commodity. Fidelity is in particularly short supply, initial target Matt Wertz acting out a marriage to Mary (Amy Seimetz) while deep into an affair with his boss Forbert's secretary (Frankie Shaw). More marital disharmony is eroding the household of gang boss Frank and his wife Vanessa (Julia Fox), and all the cheating serves as potent fuel for several memorable sharp curves.

Not satisfied with already dense convolutions, Soderbergh injects racial tension between Curt and Ron, and more tangential references to the destructive impacts of the automotive age on Black neighbourhoods. The latter undercurrent deserves more thorough exposition, but here is rolled into the industry's well-worn tendencies to pick the bottom line over health and safety. An uncredited celebrity intervention underlines the theme.

Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro lead the cast with deep-etched world weariness. Both carry the weight of characters on the far end of long years scratching out a dangerous living, now with a rare chance to win big. Awash in bags of money, malevolent intentions, no-neck thugs, and uncompromising connivance, No Sudden Move luxuriates in ambitious complexity.



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Movie Review: Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (2018)

A cross-border thriller, Sicario: Day Of The Soldado introduces and abandons multiple story lines before defaulting to a bland survive-and-bond-in-the-desert narrative.

Middle Eastern suicide bombers target civilians after being smuggled into the US by Mexican human traffickers. The CIA's Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) identifies the Carlos Reyes cartel as responsible for large-scale smuggling operations, and Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) provides Matt and his boss Cynthia Foards (Catherine Keener) a free hand to disrupt the cartel's activities.

Matt recruits private operative/assassin Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) into the operation, and along with a group of mercenaries they hatch a plan to kidnap Reyes' daughter Isabel (Isabela Merced) and pin the blame on the rival Matamoros cartel. They hope to ignite an inter-cartel war to weaken both gangs, but after abducting Isabel, Matt and Alejandro battle with corrupt Mexican police forces, causing an international incident and compromising the mission.

A sequel to the 2015 original, Day Of The Soldado (also known as Sicario 2: Soldado) arrives without star Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve, and suffers accordingly. Taylor Sheridan returns with a new script, but appears uncertain whether to go bigger or smaller, eventually getting literally caught in no man's land at the border. As a result, and despite the sturdy presence of Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro, director Stefano Sollima does not know which way to target his firepower. 

The introduction is promising enough, connecting human smuggling with terrorist atrocities and the Islamic State menace. But unfocused convolutions quickly seep in with a detour to Somali pirate land accompanied by several logic leaps to pin the blame on Mexican cartel leader Reyes, but this villain will not grace the movie with his presence.

Instead Matt and Alejandro get busy plotting to ignite a war between rival cartels, then proceed to shoot themselves in the foot by transporting Isabel into the United States and announcing the fact to Mexican officials, who are of course utterly incorruptible. Sheridan is either mocking the competence of US-funded intelligence operatives, or writing in a state of desperate distraction.

The war-between-cartels idea is the next one to be discarded, and the film trundles from initially lofty ambitions down to Alejandro and Isabel on the run and tangling with sweaty but nameless and irrelevant goons, complete with the obligatory intervention of sympathetic locals providing refuge. Somewhere in the debris of truncated storylines is a teenager on the US side of the border getting lured into the lucrative life of crime, but his adventure serves mostly to unnecessarily prolong the running time beyond two hours.

A couple of action scenes are well-executed, and the Dariusz Wolski cinematography is full of edgy flair, but this soldado is caught in the open, hobbled by uncertain priorities.



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Movie Review: Traffic (2000)

A multi-story crime epic, Traffic is an unblinking look at the illegal drug business on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Law enforcement officials, traffickers, addicts, and their families intermingle in overlapping hard-hitting narratives.

In the US, Judge Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas) of Ohio is appointed as the President's new drug czar, leading the government's "war on drugs". Wakefield is unaware his high achieving 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) and her friends are dabbling in hard drugs. When Caroline's addiction becomes obvious, Robert's work and private lives collide and his relationship with wife Barbara (Amy Irving) is strained.

In Mexico, Tijuana police officer Javier Rodriguez (Benicio del Toro) and his partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas) are in the middle of a turf war between two drug cartels. Javier is recruited by the powerful General Salazar (Tomas Milian) to help federal anti-drug efforts. On Salazar's instructions, Rodriguez arrests cartel assassin Flores (Clifton Collins, Jr.) who is then tortured for information. Wakefield seeks allies in Mexico and identifies Salazar as a potential force for good.

In San Diego, police officers Montel (Don Cheadle) and Castro (Luis Guzmán) arrest businessman Eduardo Ruiz (Miguel Ferrer), who uses storefronts as cover for a drug distribution network. In return for leniency Ruiz identifies the wealthy Carlos Ayala (Stephen Bauer) as the powerful representative for one of the Tijuana cartels. Ayala is promptly arrested, stunning his pregnant wife Helena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who is living the high-society life oblivious to her husband's real business. Montel and Castro have to keep Ruiz alive long enough to testify, while Helena gets only slimy support from Ayala's lawyer Arnie (Dennis Quaid) and turns to the assassin Flores for more potent help.

Featuring an ensemble cast, brisk pacing and enough content to easily justify the 147 minutes of running time, Traffic delves into the high-profit, high-risk, high-damage drugs business from multiple perspectives. Written by Stephen Gaghan and directed by Steven Soderbergh, the core message promotes pragmatism about the depth of the problem and the inefficacy of simplistic solutions. The loosely connected stories shine the light on unlimited supply, insatiable demand and unimaginable profits fuelling a business larger than most governments. Not surprisingly, slogans, blunt initiatives and even good intentions fold under the pressure of corruption, addiction and violence.

Traffic is about an underworld filled with ruthless behaviour, but avoids any traditional action scenes. Gaghan and Soderbergh maintain focus on individuals, personalizing the dilemmas and boiling down a gargantuan industry to a human scale. From Ayala's smug confidence that he is untouchable, to young Caroline throwing away her future in search of the next hit, passing through Rodriguez realizing everything right is wrong, the futility of declaring war on a health crisis made worse by bad laws is laid bare.

As the drama jumps between various stories, Soderbergh (also the cinematographer) uses colour to signal locales. The scenes in Mexico start with an overexposed palette of reds and yellows, while Wakefield's journey of learning about his daughter is bathed in deep blues. Helena's scenes resemble a glossy magazine representing unearned wealth and privilege.

Some narrative weaknesses creep in at the edges. Judge Wakefield becomes an unlikely private investigator, taking to the scuzzy parts of town and barging through doors to try and save his daughter. Helena's transformation from clueless wife to shrewd operator is also remarkably swift.

But with the stellar cast in top form, Soderbergh navigates towards faint optimism within individual moments of hope. One victim is at least temporarily saved and some kids get to play a ball game. In a massive sea of despair, small victories have to matter.

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Movie Review: Snatch (2000)

A madcap crime comedy, Snatch buzzes with derisive energy and restless mischief but veers towards overindulgence.

An enormous 86-carat diamond is stolen in Antwerp and Franky Four-Fingers (Benicio del Toro), a thief and gambling addict, transports it to London where he intends to connect with jeweller Denovitz (Mike Reid). Soon disparate underworld characters throughout London are chasing the priceless gem. Crooks Vinny, Sol and Tyrone are hired by Boris The Blade to steal the diamond, and Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina) flies in from New York and gets Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) involved.

Meanwhile, Turkish (Jason Statham) and his buddy Tommy (Stephen Graham) are mid-level hustlers who unintentionally get embroiled with Irish gypsies, specifically bare-knuckle brawler Mickey O'Neill (Brad Pitt), as they try to participate in illegal boxing bouts organized by intimidating crime boss Brick Top (Alan Ford). As the worlds of gambling, brawling, swine-feeding and gem-pursuing violently collide, desperation mounts and dead bodies litter the streets.

Director Guy Ritchie follows up 1998's Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels with more of the same. Snatch is more polished and ambitious, but rides the same wave of masculinity run amok, the characters living in their own hierarchical foul-mouthed world detached from normalcy. Powered by audaciously edgy camera angles and a pessimistic but bouncy soundtrack of 1970s British music, the scramble for a gigantic diamond is an epic battle royale among hard heads. 

The first half is stronger, with sharp character introductions, wry nicknames, and humour derived from Turkish and Tommy's bemusement as they enter ever deeper into Brick Top's orbit and butt heads with the impenetrably accented Mickey. The Russian Boris and his three bargain-basement bandits are a riot, their attempted hold-up of an illegal bookie joint a legendary botch.

But having done a lot of hard work, Ritchie allows Snatch to sag in a case of too much attitude and insufficient depth. The characters are starved of opportunities to evolve and get lost in an indistinctive jumble of shoot-outs and car crashes. The level of dynamism is maintained, but in the absence of empathy the action is more mechanical than potent.

From the large cast, Brad Pitt emerges with the most memorable performance, his closed-captions-required rendition of a brawler exuding coiled charisma. In a small but pointy role, Vinny Jones leaves a brooding impression as Bullet Tooth Tony.

Snatch may lack grounding, but boasts an unyielding desire to thrill.



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Movie Review: 21 Grams (2003)

A drama about life, death and atonement, 21 Grams deploys an unsettling but ultimately rewarding puzzle structure to enhance a story of three lives colliding.

Multiple plot lines unfold non-linearly from the perspective of three key characters. In simplified form:

• Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) may die unless he receives a heart transplant. His marriage to Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is strained, but she is anyway eager to get pregnant by artificial insemination before he dies. 
• Jack Jordan (Benicio del Toro) is a petty criminal and repeat offender trying to go straight. He has embraced religion and now volunteers at the church run by Reverend John (Eddie Marsan). Jack is married to Marianne (Melissa Leo) and they have two young children. 
• Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) is a recovering drug addict, now happily married to Michael (Danny Huston) and raising two young daughters.

After Jack loses his job as an apprentice golf caddy because of complaints about his tattoos, a horrible car crash disrupts many lives. Paul receives a new heart, but his relationship with Mary appears unsalvageable. He makes a determined effort to get close to Cristina, who reverts back to drug use and now has retribution on her mind.

The opening 45 minutes of 21 Grams dance on the edge between maddening and exhilarating. In a hyperactive editing job, director Alejandro González Iñárritu, working from a script by Guillermo Arriaga, fragments the plot into tiny morsels across time and space, the character connections and event timelines unexplained. The structure presents a concentration and patience challenge.

The dividend is worthwhile. Once the puzzle pieces start to fit, 21 Grams (the title is a non-scientific reference to the supposed weight of the soul) offers a compelling exploration of life's fragility and the often exasperating lines between actions and consequences. Paul bounces from looming death to euphoric reprieve upon receiving his transplant only to encounter another crisis. Cristina has turned her life around and is enjoying domestic bliss when everything is snatched from her. And Jack has made a compact with God to become a better person, and yet is struck by his most massive setback yet. 

The three protagonists merge at the intersection of new starts, old scores and burning passions, their interactions again altering all prior trajectories. With lives hanging in the balance and plenty of reasons for pessimism, children represent hopes and dreams for a better future, and also active resistance against despair. Paul's wife Mary desires his child despite - or maybe because of - his impending death. Cristina's two daughters are her greatest reward for overcoming her past addiction. And Jack's children are a cause to reform and return, more than once. 

Despite sharing the screen time almost equally, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro all bring a laudable intensity to their roles, with Watts in particular excelling in moments of crisis and uncertainty. Melissa Leo brings working class steeliness to the role of Jack's wife Marianne.

The bravura scene construction and core motifs are marginally stronger than the film's resolution, as the final act opts for a twisty road with a few too many trick turns, Arriaga hammering home the futility of seeking fulfilment through impetuous actions. But while the overall character arcs are mostly grim, 21 Grams allows rays of optimism to shine through. Few individual plans survive, but the convoluted tangle does gestate faint new pathways to a different future.

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The Movies Of Benicio del Toro

All movies starring Benicio del Toro and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Licence To Kill (1989)

Swimming With Sharks (1994)

The Usual Suspects (1995)

The Fan (1996)

Snatch (2000)

Traffic (2000)

The Pledge (2001)

21 Grams (2003)

Sin City (2005)

Savages (2012)

Inherent Vice (2014)

Sicario (2015)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (2018)

No Sudden Move (2018)

Reptile (2023)

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

One Battle After Another (2025)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Sicario (2015)

A drug trafficking action drama set on the US/ Mexico border, Sicario offers plenty of style and occasional tension, but undermines itself by frustratingly leaving blank key plot and character elements.

In Chandler, Arizona, FBI agents Kate Mercer (Emily Blunt) and Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) lead an FBI raid on a house owned by drug lord Manuel Díaz. The grisly discovery of dozens of dead bodies hidden in the walls of the house, followed by a large explosion, announce a new phase of brutality in the Mexican drug trade. Kate is nominated by her boss Dave Jennings (Victor Garber) to join the special team of CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), working to identify and stop Diaz's boss.

Kate soon meets the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio del Toro), who appears to have a dark past in the drug trade, and accompanies Matt every step of the way. With Reggie her only trustworthy ally, Kate also realizes that her involvement is intended to provide cover to Matt's barely-legal CIA operations. She joins the CIA team on a tense raid into Mexico to apprehend one of Diaz's associates, which kicks-off a chain reaction of events intended to flush out the head of the drug cartel. With the violence escalating on both sides of the border, Kate begins to question whether the solutions offered by Matt and Alejandro are any better than the problems they are trying to solve.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Sicario (hitman in Spanish) dives into the deep end of the underworld drug war raging along the southern United States border. The film is frequently visually stunning and bursting with muscular action, Villeneuve deploying fluid cameras to capture shady government operatives flaunting the rules of law in two countries, in response to drug lords elevating the levels of brutality and violence to unimaginable decibels of horror.

The story is revealed through Kate's eyes, and her by-the-book FBI training is torn asunder by the CIA running roughshod over anything that resembles due process. Matt, and more mysteriously Alejandro, make up their own rules, provided with cover by faraway faceless politicians eager to gain some measure of control and not worried anymore about the niceties of national laws and jurisdictional boundaries. The film is filled with dead bodies, heavily armed and thick necked Delta Force types who shoot first and never get around to asking questions, and plenty of armoured black SUVs and nifty helicopters lending heft to the battle against drug traffickers. Kate may be worried about the unauthorized imprisonment, torture, shoot-outs and killings, but rarely has a deadly conflict looked like so much fun.

But beyond the adrenaline-packed scenes of burly men pointing big guns at each other, Sicario seems to want to say a lot more. The blurry lines of the CIA's authority to carry out operations on US soil are hinted at, and the briefest outline of a plan to ease the drug violence by controlling but not stopping the industry is sketched in. But the Taylor Sheridan script takes only tentative steps in these directions, and then backs away. Instead of delving, justifying or debating the issues, the film loses energy with plenty of repetitive scenes featuring a frustrated Kate asking the same questions and getting the same non-answers from Matt.

The character development is also lacking. Kate, Matt and Alejandro are three clearly fascinating people who are very much worth knowing. But the film ends and it is disheartening how little is known about them, beyond the here and now. The missing depth adds to a cold emotional core, and beyond Kate's abject horror at the extrajudicial methods callously used by men like Matt and Alejandro, there is little resonance to all the action. Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro are never less than committed, without being able to delve into any personal contexts.

Sicario hints at having important things to say past all the blazing guns and impressive hardware, but actually offers disappointingly little in the way of enduring substance.

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Movie Review: Savages (2012)

Oliver Stone opens the taps of violence and gore and wades knee deep into the world of drug turf wars. Savages is stark, vivid, and occasionally beautiful in its brutality, but ultimately falls in the gap between where insufficient wit meets extreme violence.

War veteran Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and sensitive botanist Ben (Aaron Johnson) are best friends, and run a successful boutique marijuana operation in California. They grow and supply high grade weed to a large network of distributors, and openly share a girlfriend, Ophelia (Blake Lively), better known as simply O. A ruthless Mexican drug cartel run by Elena (Salma Hayek) wants to muscle in on their business, with the negotiations engineered by lead henchmen Lado (Benicio del Toro), who never stops at simply killing when torturing and decapitating are available options.


When the negotiations fail, Elena's cartel kidnaps O to force Chon and Ben to cooperate. As O endures torture and confinement by Lado and his fellow brutes, Chon and Ben turn to their protector for help, a corrupt Drugs Enforcement Administration agent named Dennis (John Travolta). He provides them with enough information to expose weaknesses in Elena's empire, including revealing the locations of safe houses used as money collection and transfer points. With all sides getting desperate, Elena's daughter Magda (Sandra Echeverria) is also placed at risk as a showdown looms.

Stone places three relatively fresh faces at the front of Savages, and the lack of star power among Chon, Ben and O works well. Stone is free to fill the canvass typically occupied by star personas with some unique colours. Taylor Kitsch (who also starred in 2012's Battleships and John Carter) is the least interesting, but at least here is a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars openly enjoying his residual aggressiveness and not succumbing to torture by internal demons. Aaron Johnson gets the more sensitive role, Ben a brilliant botanist and also a caring soul who uses the proceeds of his drugs business to help disadvantaged African villages.

Most engaging is Blake Lively, television's Gossip Girl building her big screen reputation, narrating the movie and proving to be not only the common point in a sizzling sexual threesome, but also the fulcrum of the larger battle between Elena, Ben and Chon. A disruptive prisoner, O is enough of a nuisance to earn an audience with Elena, a savory encounter in which each woman expresses condescending pity towards the other.

The secondary characters are brought to life by movie stalwarts. John Travolta is all smiles and evasiveness as Dennis, a federal agent one misstep away from life in prison, while Benicio Del Toro just ploughs through Savages as the closest thing to the embodiment of the title, but a man who is also as clever as he is violent. Salma Hayek gives Elena some depth, a woman who inherited the business and who clearly enjoys the required ruthlessness, but who is also unable to fortify all her weak spots.

Stone tackles the violence of drug crime head-on, and throws it all on the screen. Mass decapitations, torture, setting victims ablaze, explosions and routine shootings litter Savages, creating a world where lives are cheaper than drugs. It may be slightly over the top in a California context, but Stone is certainly true to the stream of headlines chronicling the endless atrocities in Mexico.

Between the sex, the blood, the corruption and the rival criminals calling each other savages for vastly different reasons, Savages always maintains interest. Despite the chopping of heads, the movie just lacks a cutting edge to push it towards the hyper stylized world it seeks to occupy.

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Movie Review: The Usual Suspects (1995)

A clever caper movie, The Usual Suspects is certainly engaging but ultimately a bit too clever for it's own good. A solid cast enjoys a combination of energetic verbal sparring and old-fashioned heist action infused with more modern blood and violence, but an excess of criminal characters all attempting to outsmart one another causes an imbalance that threatens to overwhelm the movie.

A lot of bad people are lying dead in and around a ship at the San Pedro Harbour in Los Angeles, victims of a full-blown shoot-out between rival gangs. One of only two survivors is Roger Kint (Kevin Spacey), known as Verbal, a small time hood with a pronounced limp, who has survived the carnage without a scratch. US Customs and FBI Agents, including Special Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) round on Verbal, interrogating him to unravel why so many criminals met their bullet-perforated fate at the waterfront. Through flashbacks, Verbal recounts the story of his now-deceased criminal gang colleagues: mastermind and former corrupt cop Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), trigger guy McManus (Stephen Baldwin), the almost incomprehensible Fenster (Benicio del Toro), and Hockney (Kevin Pollack).

After the gang forms in a jail cell, Keaton leads them in holding up a corrupt police taxi service in New York, and then, at the request of a mysterious Mr. Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaithe), robbing a Los Angeles jeweler. Kobayashi then reveals that his employer is the legendary criminal Keyser Soze, and asks Keaton to lead an assault on a boat belonging to a Hungarian gang, who are rivals of Soze in the drug trade. The attack would be dangerous, but the pay-off for Keaton and his men is huge: 91 million dollars.

Keaton asks Verbal to sit-out and witness the assault, which goes a bit better than planned, with Keaton and McManus surviving the vicious shoot-out. But a mysterious figure appears from the shadows, eliminates them both and disappears. Kujan needs to decide how much of Verbal's story he can believe, and what to make of some really odd pieces in the convoluted puzzle.

The Usual Suspects climaxes with a double twist ending. but while initially the final revelation appears ingenious, it actually disintegrates under it's own weight: If Keyser Soze is as brilliant and resourceful as the film reveals him to be, he certainly chose a very rudimentary, brute-force method to achieve his ultimate objective. The film is essentially a character study, and while Kevin Spacey and Gabriel Byrne provide Verbal and  Keaton with some depth and interesting texture, the rest of the criminals and cops are vaguely sketched by Christopher McQuarrie's script, and quite forgettable.

Director Bryan Singer maintains a brisk pace and brings out the tension in the dialogue exchanges and narration that underpin the unfolding plot, and just about maintains control of the increasing layers of complexity. The Usual Suspects is enjoyable, mostly for being a quite unusually intelligent movie, but it does chase itself into a corner where the smarts overpower the logic.

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