‘Savages’ is a love story tangled up with the war on drugs

By John Horn, Los Angeles Times.

Oliver Stone's film is based on Don Winslow's novel about a woman kidnapped by a Mexican cartel.

Ben, Chon and O are Southern California dreamers — and in Oliver Stone's upcoming film "Savages," they run right into a Mexican drug cartel nightmare.

The two young men and woman at the center of Don Winslow's novel that inspired Stone's film are green-thinking Laguna Beach entrepreneurs, but rather than fabricating solar panels or organizing compost classes, the comely trio farms and sells knock-your-socks off marijuana, a hybrid weed so powerful it quickly becomes the envy of less kindhearted dealers south of the border.

"It's a classic Walmart against a high-end boutique," said Stone, who directed the Sept. 28 Universal release from a script by Shane Salerno (television's "Hawaii Five-0") and Winslow, whose celebrated crime novels include "The Power of the Dog" and "The Winter of Frankie Machine."

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