Hollywood

Blake Lively Says ‘Savages’ Is Empowering To Women — Here’s Why She’s Right

You’re in for a lot of gore and decapitation in Oliver Stone’s new action/drama “Savages,” which stars Blake Lively as a whimsical California flower child who is kidnapped by the Mexican drug cartel after her marijuana-dealing boyfriends choose not to work with the merciless drug lords. Though the plot line — which involves Lively’s character dating two guys — has upset some feminists, the actress says the movie is empowering, as its female characters call the shots.

“It’s such an exciting character for me, and as a young woman you don’t often get a character that has such an incredible journey and arc and experiences so much. They’re often just the prize for the men,” the 24-year-old told Fox411 at the Los Angeles premiere of the flick. “But in this movie, the women are the ones in power. That was cool.”

Once again, Lively is on the money, as everything in “Savages” revolves around her. After she is plucked from her heavenly Laguna Beach life and chained to a couch with nothing but pizza and toothpaste sans toothbrush, her significant others Chon and Ben drop everything to get her back. They act out of character, take lives and embrace monstrosity because Lively’s character is their everything. As Chon says, “every man in her life has let her down,” and they’re driven to break that cycle. The other woman in charge is Elena, the “queen” of the cartel who controls all that goes on. She also manages a slew of corrupt men, the most villainous of which is happy murderer Lado, and she orchestrates the snatching of Lively’s character when Ben and Chon opt out of the partnership deal. “She has to have that presence,” Hayek said in a video of her character. “She has to command that amount of fear…She has machos like Benicio Del Toro work underneath her, it’s like a female fantasy.”

“Savages” follows a modern (if not hard to come by) love story and a tough female leader with a soft spot for family, so while it’s much too graphic and unusual for some, it adds a new dimension to the state of relationships and shows just how much power women can have over men.

Watch Lively talk about her character below:

Watch Hayek talk about Elena:

TAGS: blake lively | blake lively savages

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