A harsh tale of drugs, thugs and free love

Oliver Stone’s latest film pits a pair of Californian neo-hippy cannabis growers against Mexican drug barons aiming to move their business north of the border, with predictably violent results.

There has not been any kind of major violence on this side of the border yet

In what he stresses is fiction, Mr Stone’s Savages returns to the theme of drugs and violence that he explored as the screenwriter of Midnight Express (1978), for which he won one of his three Oscars, and Scarface (1983).

The film, based on the book Savages by US author Don Winslow, tells the story of two Californians − Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) − and their shared girlfriend Ophelia (Blake Lively).

They divide their life between surfing, smoking, shopping and a flourishing cannabis-growing business. Everything is going swimmingly until a cartel run by Elena (Salma Hayek) suggests an alliance. Ben and Chon refuse, prompting heavies played by Benicio Del Toro and Demian Bichir to kidnap Ophelia.

The two hippies decide to take up arms and launch a merciless fight against the cartel with the help of a dirty drug enforcement agent played by John Travolta.

“This is a hypothetical fiction. This is not Traffic,” said Mr Stone, referring to Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 movie on the US-Mexico drugs problem.

“Traffic was a wonderful movie but it’s much more documentary-like.

“This one is hypothetical. It hasn’t happened yet,” he told reporters at a recent film promotion in Beverly Hills. As usual, Mr Stone has done considerable research and met a lot of people in preparation for making the film, and he says he learned a great deal about drugs and violence.

“There has not been any kind of major violence on this side of the border yet,” he said, compared to the 50,000 deaths since the launch of Mexico’s military crackdown on powerful cartels in 2006.

“It’s in the interest of the Mexican cartels to keep it south because if they start to move here, they’re gonna get a lot of bad publicity and there’s gonna be a lot of consequences.”

But he acknowledges that cartels are not completely absent in California. “They are here, they are growing. We know that. There’s been busts. They may have deals here in California because the best laboratory in the world is now here,” said Mr Stone.

The director, a staunch supporter of decriminalising drugs, trumpets the quality of Californian cannabis, the sale of which is legal in the Golden State for medical purposes.

“We do have an independent growers market here, which is like a boutique business, and they are very good people. They grow great stuff, the best I’ve ever had in 40 years,” he said.

Savages was released in the US this weekend.