“Bloody and Ironic”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Savages is the latest film directed by Oliver Stone, and it was also written by him along with Don Winslow, whose 2010 novel was the basis for the film.

The best-known members of the cast, but not necessarily the stars, are Blake Lively, Benicio Del Toro, John Travolta, and Salma Hayek, and the story is about a Mexican drug cartel trying to move in on the successful marijuana business run by two best buddies in Southern California.

Lively plays Ophelia, a spoiled young rich girl who goes just by “O” and who is the girlfriend of both Chon and Ben, the successful marijuana growers and distributors who have been best friends since high school and whose pot is considered the best in all of California, if not the world.

O also narrates the story, and more than once she says, “Just because I’m telling you this story doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end.”

If she is alive at the end, that would be ironic, wouldn’t it?

On the other hand, if she is not alive at the end, that would also be ironic.

One day Chon and Ben receive an e-mail video from the Baja Cartel in Mexico that shows a bunch of bodies with decapitated heads and blood all over everything.

Then they receive an e-mail from the cartel wanting to meet the next day. Ben is afraid of the Mexicans, but Chon says he is not afraid of them. Of course, Chon is a former Navy SEAL who smuggled the marijuana seeds back to the U.S. from Afghanistan that got them started in the business.

Chon and Ben check in with Dennis, a DEA agent who is less than pristine in his duties, and Dennis advises them to take whatever deal they are offered rather than decapitation.

However, when Chon and Ben meet with the representatives of the Baja Cartel, they don’t like the deal they are offered and tell the representatives that they will think about it and meet again in 24 hours.

Ben wants to get out of the business altogether, but before they can do anything, the cartel kidnaps O and holds her prisoner, which forces their hand, because they will do anything to get O back safely.

And the rest of the movie is just about anything.

Savages is bloody and ironic.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”