Kernel Rating (out of 5): 
MPAA Rating: R Length: 110 minutes
Age Appropriate for: 17+. The R-rating is serious; it’s a movie about a drug war, so there’s murder, torture, rape, cursing, drugs, nudity, sex (including a topless woman and a threesome), and a whole mess of other things. Both thematically and visually too mature for young teen viewers, especially Blake Lively’s fans from “Gossip Girl” or Taylor Kitsch’s from his previous PG-13 films this year.
‘Savages’ is unbearably frustrating in its mediocrity, a mess of a boring plot, silly twists, and unsympathetic characters. A movie about Mexican drug cartels could be a disturbingly intriguing thing, but Oliver Stone’s attempt is laughable in all the wrong ways.
By Roxana Hadadi
There are many things wrong with Oliver Stone’s “Savages,” his first directing gig since 2010’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” but ultimately the film has one main flaw: Its utter lack of believability. A film about the Mexican drug cartels—that would be a brutal, terrifying, overwhelmingly nightmarish thing; if you read the news, you know all about the dismembered bodies and murdered journalists. But while Stone flirts with those hard truths in “Savages,” he refuses to go all the way, instead delivering what feels like half a movie.
