From Tom Cruise in ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and Val Kilmer in ‘The Doors’ to Michael Douglas in ‘Wall Street’ and Woody Harrelson in ‘Natural Born Killers’, Oliver Stone is known for eliciting searing, exceptional performances from his troupe of actors. A keen observer whose idiosyncratic, occasionally provocative approach is in service of performance and story, Stone’s style is referred to by cast and crew as “challenging but fair.”

It was critical to Stone that he select actors who could embrace the kaleidoscopic trademarks of the story’s characters. Indeed, ‘Savages’ features a sprawling cast, whose intertwining and parallel stories lead up to an explosive climax. Moreover, the battle between the Baja Cartel and Ben, Chon and O exposes complex emotional motivations and frailties in each character. O is not a mere party girl, and Chon isn’t simply a stoic killer. Ironically, Ben the pacifist, when pushed to the brink, is capable of extreme violence. Elena, for all her power and lethal detachment, is maternal and lonely. The methodically brutal Lado lives in fear of his petite female boss, while Dennis, for all his clever machinations, is ultimately a survivor with great loyalty to his family.

Fairly early on in the casting process, Taylor Kitsch landed on Stone’s radar as a potential lead for the thriller. When Stone contacted Kitsch to play Chon, the badass to Ben’s pacifist, Kitsch responded to the material in a very Chon-like manner. “I had read the book before it had been announced that Oliver was involved, but there were rumors that he had optioned it,” Kitsch recalls. “I thought, ‘Man, I would murder to play this guy.’ When I found out that Oliver was attached, well that was it. I felt that I would be a great fit.”

A trained killer and ex-Navy SEAL, Chon uses his skill set in fierce defense of the people whom he loves the most, O and Ben. Kitsch explains the motivation for this character who thinks drugs are a rational response to insanity: “Chon is a guy who has been jaded from day one. He’s seen so much shit in Afghanistan that his first reaction is always to go to violence. You’ll see a different guy when he’s with Ben and O. He can let his guard down with them, maybe even laugh and joke, and that’s rare for Chon. His real purpose in life is to protect Ben and O, and he will kill to do that.”

Discussing his relationship with the director, Kitsch reflects: “Oliver is old-school. It’s all about the work, which I admire. I loved how he would take a break, talk about the scene and work it out. It’s very settling. But you’d better bring your A game. Oliver notices every nuance, even if it’s just a glance. He will question why you’re doing it, which makes you prepare even more. When you do mess up, and everyone has that moment, he will absolutely let you know. But he will also tell you when the take is awesome. He keeps you on your toes, and your performance is better for it.”

Blake Lively plays the beautiful, warmhearted O—a free spirit who, when kidnapped, proves to have just as much grit and fortitude as the Baja Cartel. About his choice for the part, Stone commends: “Blake’s an impressive actress. She was only 23. She had a lot of input into her character and is fearless. Blake has to appear in the movie often in an unflattering light, and she never flinched.”

Lively becomes the voice of ‘Savages’, as O narrates the tale, and Stone used the voiceover technique as efficiently and specifically as possible. The director explains: “The idea of O narrating the movie grew naturally from the book, where she tells the story to the reader. But a voiceover in a film can potentially sap it of its tension by making it overly self-conscious. Insofar as the book has more than a hundred scenes and many characters, far more than we can afford in a movie, we worked to minimize the information and still use the voiceover to connect the dots.”

For her part, Lively liked the fact that “O is the one thread that ties everyone together.” Indeed, she interacts in multiple scenes with most of the other actors and had to run the gamut as a performer, and calls the shoot “intense, tumultuous and challenging.” Says the actress: “It was amazing because I got to exist in each character’s world, from this privileged life with the boys in Laguna to being tortured and in cages and being shipped off to Tijuana. It was a challenge to experience so much in a film on so many different levels—from ultimate happiness to ultimate pain.”

The Southern California native was fascinated by the story’s take on a nontraditional family and how three people could love each other that much. Lively offers that she treated O’s story with respect and care: “One of the main reasons that I felt that Ben, Chon and O were together is that they were each other’s family. They were each other’s everything. None of them had real families. They did not have anyone to learn from, no one who was there for them through thick and thin. And they found that in each other.”

Image Courtesy of  Savages

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