Anyone else excited to catch the film adaptation of Don Winslow's Savages? I read both Savages and it's prequel, The Kings of Cool, and thought highly of them both. I'm starting to read other Winslow books, going back to his Neal Carey series.
Savages, for those who don't know, is about Ben and Chon, two Laguna Beach pot growers who've developed some killer herb due to Ben's degree in Botany. They share a common girlfriend/sex partner, O (for Ophelia). The Mexican drug Cartel makes an offer to Ben and Chon--either sell us your primo weed at cost and allow us take over your customers/territory, or you can have your heads chopped off. (The cartel sends them an mpeg of a row of decapitated heads.)
Ben and Chon decide they'd rather just quit then work for the Cartel. Elena, the matron of the Cartel, and someone you most definitely don't want as an enemy, orders O to be kidnapped and held until either Ben and Chon work three years for the Cartel or come up with a flat payment of twenty million dollars.
That's when Ben and Chon decide to rob the Cartel, in disguise, to produce the extra cash needed to buy O's freedom.
The film version stars Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, and Blake Lively as Chon, Ben and O. Salma Hayek, John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro also star as Elena, Dennis, a crooked DEA agent, and Lado, a stone cold killer who works for Elena.
The film opens July 6. It'll have some serious competition with Spidey, but I will definitely be choosing Savages over Spidey, at least as to what film I'll be seeing first. I'm a sucker for intelligent action films and I liked the book quite a lot, so I'll be going to see this with high hopes (no pun intended).