Kitsch, Lively and Johnson in Savages.

What I know about the internecine workings of Mexican drug cartels you could fill in an egg cup—and still have enough space left over for the egg. But this I know: It’s a subject and a subculture that has got to be more fascinating than anything in gonzo director Oliver Stone’s deadly, hateful, preposterous and cliché-riddled movie Savages. He even makes the violence look dull.

Based on one of those Don Winslow carnage epics that appeal to grown men who still read comic books, Savages boogies to the beat of an assault weapon, cutting back and forth between the cold-blooded drug lords in Tijuana and the stoner gringos of Southern California, fighting it out for billions in the Baja Peninsula. The convoluted plot, which would be difficult to decipher with the aid of a microscope, is as familiar as any one of a thousand cable network television series—and Mr. Stone’s dialogue is as wooden as a rocking chair, possibly because his script was co-written by the dubious Shane Salerno (Alien vs. Predator) and novelist Don Winslow, whose grasp of the way real people talk is as phony as reality TV. The American potheads, unconvincingly depicted as tattooed hunks with romantic notions of Butch and Sundance on reefer, are Chon (camera-ready Taylor Kitsch, who keeps stalling his PR-funneled elevator to pop stardom by pushing the down button) and Ben (Aaron Johnson, the British star of such monumental motion picture milestones as Kick-Ass). Best friends since high school, Chon is a combat veteran who worked as a Navy seal in Iraq, starting the business by smuggling cannabis seeds from Afghanistan, and Ben is a soulful Berkeley graduate who invests his share of lucrative profits from the weed trade in noble world causes. Together, in Laguna Beach, they share tattooed washboard abs and cuddle up in the same bed with a bottle blonde named O (Blake Lively). It’s a perfect soft-core porn arrangement (lots of nipples, but no real nudity) until their wacked out ménage a trois is rudely interrupted by greedy and villainous drug lords from  south of the border ruled by Goth queen Elena (Salma Hayek in a tossable wig of lacquered bangs, looking like a cross between Louise Brooks and Cleopatra) and her depraved henchman, the psychopath Lado (Benicio Del Toro, who has traveled down this homicidal highway before, in better films than this). The best smoke in the world, apparently, is not from Thailand, Jamaica or Saigon, but mass produced in Chon and Ben’s pot factory, a foundation with branches in Africa, Asia and West Hollywood. Elena and her ruthless gang want a piece of the boys’ 15 million satisfied customers by forcibly encouraging them to join the Mexican work force, but when they resist (opting to retire and—are you ready?—invest their illegal fortune in solar energy), she kidnaps O and threatens to cut off her fingers, one by one. In retaliation, the boys kidnap Elena’s beloved daughter and war erupts. Stirring the pozole is Dennis, a creep from the Drug Enforcement Agency who plays both sides against each other, rejoicing in the ensuing brutality and torture. Dennis is played with demented glee by John Travolta, who looks like a Pleistocene Era warthog.

They are all savages, and when Mr. Stone runs out of ideas about what to do with them, he borrows every crime-thriller cliché, from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to Tony Scott’s Man on Fire, bathes the bloody decapitations and rapes in the glow of lush cinematography, then distracts the viewer with camera tricks, black-and-white conversions, cell-phone images, classical music and, finally, a maddening finale, narrated by O. Then the movie backs up like a VHS tape on rewind, and there’s an alternate cop-out ending, even more infuriating than the first.

Mr. Kitsch is pretty, despite the unnecessary battle scars on his face designed to illustrate character but signifying nothing more than the hours he spent in the makeup chair. Mr. Johnson’s changing moral compass, from pacifist to killing machine, is as contrived as Mr. Travolta’s epiphany from invulnerable monster to sympathetic family man. Ms. Hayek, as the Mother Goddam of the Mexican drug cartel, is the best thing in the movie. To be fair, the actors all work hard to keep the audience awake, but the sloppy direction and drugged-out script make Savages hard to rise above. Continuity and logic have never been Oliver Stone’s strengths, but this movie is barely credible. What makes drug lords hard to arrest is their unexceptional ordinariness. In real life, they all look like plumbers and accountants. The predators here are so beautiful and exotic and camera-ready that any law enforcement officer with half a brain would have no trouble spotting them a block away. Worse still, they’re boring. They blow off their victims’ kneecaps, and you don’t even notice. These are neither good people nor interesting savages, and they’re not worth caring about. Neither is the movie.

rreed@observer.com

SAVAGES

Running Time 130 minutes

Written by Shane Salerno, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone

Directed by Oliver Stone

Starring Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively

1/4

If you’re caught with a small amount of pot—25 grams or less—in your backpack, the penalty is a $100 fine (for the first offense). But if a police officer asks you to empty your pockets and you pull out a small bag of weed, you are subject to arrest on a misdemeanor. Why? Because by taking the pot out of your pocket, you exposed it to “public view.”

It just doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider the police officers routinely order people to empty their pockets during stop-and-frisk operations. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal will correct this inequity by decriminalizing possession of 25 grams or less in public view. Legislators should pass this measure quickly.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal has been portrayed as an intervention in New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk policing strategy, which civil libertarians, editorial boards and others have sharply criticized in recent weeks. Perhaps the measure will have some effect on stop-and-frisk, but the real merit of the proposal is the effect it will have on the lives of young people, most of them black and Latino, who have been arrested on the “public view” possession charge.

Police in New York City arrested more than 50,000 people last year for possession of small amounts of pot. Over the last decade, 400,000 people have been busted on small-time possession charges. Few, if any, major cities in the nation police marijuana possession as energetically as New York.

Thousands of lives have been altered, none for the better, as a result of this misguided crackdown. Young people arrested on “public view” possession charges have had to suffer through the booking process, find money to hire a lawyer, and, if they were convicted, forever possess a rap sheet simply because they emptied their pockets as ordered by police.

New York’s spectacular success against violent offenders over the last 15 years has captured the imagination of other police agencies around the world and literally has saved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers, many of them in poor neighborhoods. But the huge number of marijuana arrests no doubt has soured what should be a strong relationship between a successful police department and communities that are now stronger and more vibrant as a result of the city’s campaign against violent offenders.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would go a long way toward easing tensions between the city’s minority communities and the NYPD. That, no doubt, is why Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly supports the Cuomo proposal.

The NYPD shows no signs of scaling back its stop-and-frisk operation. But if the Legislature approves Mr. Cuomo’s plan, otherwise innocent young people will no longer be subject to arrest if they pull out a small bag of pot when they empty their pockets. That would be a triumph of common sense.

Now, the would-be kingpins have started to speak, and not surprisingly they're lashing out against the wolves in sheep's clothing that busted them. The New York Daily News reports that Chris Coles, a 20-year-old Columbia student, says the powder-and-pills sting on campus was "blown up to the umpteenth" -- blown! -- and remains convinced that some time in the slammer won't restrict him from finishing his degree.

A double major in anthropology and political science who plans to attend law school, Coles took the sob story route and was all like "I got in the game to pay for college!." Good luck with that excuse, man.

The Daily News also includes this anecdote:

[Coles] said that when one of his codefendants, Jose Stephan Perez, asked for a jacket when he was rousted him from his room, cops slapped a Columbia sweatshirt on him.

"They were laughing at him," Coles said of Perez, 20, who is attending Columbia as one of billionaire Bill Gates' Millennium Scholars.

Better than wearing stripes!

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

"If you've been to a rock concert you know that pot sort of makes these big billowy white clouds and it didn't do that so I wasn't sure if it was real or not … I asked Zach afterwards he said it was 'THC-free' marijuana," Hoover said on the show.

Galifianakis fired up what appeared to be a doobie during the Oct. 29 episode of "Real Time." He was on a panel of guests who were discussing Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana for recreational use in California. Proposition 19 was defeated by a 54%-46% margin in Tuesday's election. During the Maher appearance, Galifianakis passed the joint to Hoover who smelled it before offering it to her fellow panelists.

"It's real," Hoover said after taking a sniff.

"Real Time" films at the CBS Television City compound in Los Angeles where medical marijuana is legal for people with prescriptions from a doctor.

Both Maher and Galifianakis later denied that the joint was real. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Maher said:

"If it was a real joint, Wolf, I would have smoked it ... I think it was cloves or something … Zach's crazy, he's not that crazy."

"It was definitely not cloves," Hoover said on "The O'Reilly Factor."

Galifianakis suggested the stunt was "smoke and mirrors" during an appearance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon." The comedian is currently promoting his movie "Due Date."

Hoover has not responded to a request for comment from The Observer.

Full Disclosure: Hunter Walker made a donation of $20 to the "Yes on 19" campaign.