09-05-2015, 02:40 PM
A couple of smart likable dudes build a successful California business based on their high-THC brand of marijuana. But when a Mexican cartel is driven from its digs by a government crackdown, it moves into the States and wants part of their lucrative business. Salma Hayek is the head of the Mexican cartel. The movie is very intelligent, going into considerable depth showing the business side of things, where everyone makes a decent profit as long as no one balks. Well, the two likable guys decide to balk, wherein their girlfriend (whom they share) gets kidnapped and held hostage until they decide to change their tune.
Despite a few unfortunate lapses -- a weak voice-over, a fake ending, etc. -- the movie is overall quite decent. Good acting, very cerebral for this type of movie.
John Travolta has a small role as a rather hapless dirty cop who sinks ever deeper into the conflict, finding it necessary to play both sides of the conflict just to stay alive.
Salma Hayek puts in one really strange performance. I won’t say she phoned in her performance, but she seems distracted throughout the movie, often gazing off to the side as if enamored with some Asian dude on set. She also spends a good deal of time just sitting around, or in bed. At the climax (actually there are two climaxes, as sometimes happens in these convoluted tales, with one imagined, one real), Salma gets out of a car and waddles forward like a duck. I kid you not. She’s as awkward as a penguin in an earthquake. Also, earlier in the movie there’s this quick-cut (easy to miss) scene where she arrives somewhere by plane, and her handlers give her a wheelchair assist in disembarking. WTF?
After I finished watching the movie, I went online to see if I had missed something in the movie. But none of the reviews called attention to this fact.
So then I did some research on her personal life, and that's when I hit paydirt. It turns that in 2011 (a year before the movie’s release), she suffered an accident in the home. She had got up one morning as usual, directly onto her pommel horse for a short routine, then did her typical tumbling run across the living room to the kitchen, there to start coffee. After that she took the balance beam to the bathroom, where she used the reinforced shower curtain rod as a horizontal bar, jumping up, grasping it, making several rotations, then dismounting with a triple somersault into the bathtub for her shower. Unfortunately, on this particular occasion her foot caught the edge of the tub and she tore two tendons in her ankle.
Or as the tabloids described it, blowing it out of all proportion, "Salma had an accident in her bathroom, resulting in two torn tendons."
This had a profound affect on her career. She had to abandon one movie role playing a prostitute, because she couldn’t wear high heels and gyrate as the role required. This, to my mind, was the greatest world tragedy of 2011. But not wanting to suspend her career entirely, she did take on this role in Savages, and did the best that she could.
Which, in Salma Hayek's case, is always doubly ample.
The end.
Despite a few unfortunate lapses -- a weak voice-over, a fake ending, etc. -- the movie is overall quite decent. Good acting, very cerebral for this type of movie.
John Travolta has a small role as a rather hapless dirty cop who sinks ever deeper into the conflict, finding it necessary to play both sides of the conflict just to stay alive.
Salma Hayek puts in one really strange performance. I won’t say she phoned in her performance, but she seems distracted throughout the movie, often gazing off to the side as if enamored with some Asian dude on set. She also spends a good deal of time just sitting around, or in bed. At the climax (actually there are two climaxes, as sometimes happens in these convoluted tales, with one imagined, one real), Salma gets out of a car and waddles forward like a duck. I kid you not. She’s as awkward as a penguin in an earthquake. Also, earlier in the movie there’s this quick-cut (easy to miss) scene where she arrives somewhere by plane, and her handlers give her a wheelchair assist in disembarking. WTF?
After I finished watching the movie, I went online to see if I had missed something in the movie. But none of the reviews called attention to this fact.
So then I did some research on her personal life, and that's when I hit paydirt. It turns that in 2011 (a year before the movie’s release), she suffered an accident in the home. She had got up one morning as usual, directly onto her pommel horse for a short routine, then did her typical tumbling run across the living room to the kitchen, there to start coffee. After that she took the balance beam to the bathroom, where she used the reinforced shower curtain rod as a horizontal bar, jumping up, grasping it, making several rotations, then dismounting with a triple somersault into the bathtub for her shower. Unfortunately, on this particular occasion her foot caught the edge of the tub and she tore two tendons in her ankle.
Or as the tabloids described it, blowing it out of all proportion, "Salma had an accident in her bathroom, resulting in two torn tendons."
This had a profound affect on her career. She had to abandon one movie role playing a prostitute, because she couldn’t wear high heels and gyrate as the role required. This, to my mind, was the greatest world tragedy of 2011. But not wanting to suspend her career entirely, she did take on this role in Savages, and did the best that she could.
Which, in Salma Hayek's case, is always doubly ample.
The end.
I'm nobody's pony.
