7.4 Salvador (1986)
7.0 Platoon (1986) 6.9 Wall Street (1987) 6.5 Talk Radio (1988) 6.5 Born on the Fourth of July (1989) 4.5 The Doors (1991) 5.0 JFK (1991) 5.0 Heaven & Earth (1993) 7.8 Natural Born Killers (1994) 6.0 Nixon (1995) 5.0 U Turn (1997) 6.8 Any Given Sunday (1999), 6.0 Alexander (2004) 6.0 World Trade Center (2006) 6.0 W (2008) 6.0 Money Never Sleeps (2010) 6.5 Savages (2012) 6.3 Snowden (2016) | Links: |
Oliver Stone (USA, 1946), who had scripted
Alan Parker's Midnight Express,
Brian De Palma's Scarface and
Michael Cimino's
Year of the Dragon, debuted with
Salvador (1986), a powerful political drama
that conveys at the same time the celebratory overtones of
Sergej Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin,
a fresco of the inhumanity of war a` la
Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now
and the deranged nihilism of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter.
The protagonist is a loser who loses all the way to the end, unable to make
a difference in the world just like he cannot control his life.
Meanwhile Doc is beginning to enjoy his stay in Salvador, but he gets in trouble with both gangsters and police and Richard has to bribe them with alcohol. Maria's little brother Carlos, who has insulted some thugs, gets arrested and Cathy helps Richard to meet with ambassador Tom and asks him for help. The ambassador is obviously uninterested in the problem of a Salvadoran peasant. Richard is also worried that Maria doesn't have an id and can be arrested and killed at any time. His solution is to marry her, although she is reluctant because she's a devout Catholic and Richard is not even a Catholic and a bad Christian anyway. Richard, an inveterate drinker, takes confession in the cathedral and admits to the priest that he loves Maria so much that he's ready to change. Richard, Doc and Maria attend mass during which the archbishop attacks the right-wing government. Maria and Richard take communion together from the hands of the archbishop. Next to them a man pulls out a gun and kills the archbishop. The soldiers assembled outside then shoot on the people leaving the cathedral. The soldiers then arrest Ramon, who is totally innocent, in a chaotic scene. John, who has photographed the scene, is arrested too. The right-wing politician tells a crowd at a rally that the archbishop deserved to die. Richard shouts that he is the leader of the death squads and the right-wing politician simply reads his name on his press card and walks away smiling. Maria's little brother Carlos is assassinated. Maria is furious with Richard because there's been trouble since he came back. Richard, Doc and John gets drunk. Richard tells Cathy that he wants to marry Maria. Cathy tries in vain to talk sense into Richard: he is a failed journalist, broke, and twice the age of Maria. The fascist captain wants to teach Richard a lesson and John saves his ass. That night paramilitaries stop Cathy and other female aid workers who are driving out of town, gang-rape them and then kill them. John and Richard witness the moment that the bodies are found. The ambassador recommends to cut off all aid to the government but there are people in the embassy supporting the right-wing militias. A fellow journalist, Peter, finds Richard a job to replace him while he travels to Venezuela. Richard and John are escorted to the mountains to meet with the guerrillas. John and Richard interview commander Marti. Richard meets with officials at the embassy and accuses them of lying to the US public about the rebels, who are just peasants fighting for justice against a fascist dictatorship. They reply that the alternative to the right-wing government would be much worse and they advise him to leave the country. When the rebels attack a town, John and Richard rush to photograph the battle and witness the rebels riding horses into town. The US ambassador, informed that the town is about to fall to the "communists", is pressured by his right-wing advisors to support the government. Soon, government troops enter the battle with tanks, helicopters and bombers provided by the USA and massacre the rebels. John and Richard photograph everything heroically until John is killed and Richard wounded. Before dying, John gives Richard the films of his photographs. During the battle Richard witnesses atrocities also committed by the rebels, and accuses them of becoming just like their oppressors. Back in the capital, Richard is taken to a hospital and the bullets are removed. Doc tells Richard that the soldiers are looking for him and convinces him to leave the country. Richard, John and Maria drive to the border. Richard and Maria are detained because Maria's id is fake. They search Richard and find the film that he hid in his boots. Richard screams when they destroy the film. The border police are thugs who are ready to kill him but Doc manages to call the ambassador and at the last minute, when the gun is already pointed at Richard's head, the order arrives to release them. Finally, Richard and Maria reach the border of the USA. They take a bus to San Francisco but along the way they are stopped by immigration officers. They single out Maria and deport her. Richard protests in vain and is arrested. The titles inform us that Maria survived, John's photos were published, and Richard is still looking for Maria. Platoon (1986) is a war movie that mainly explores the psychology of fear. The movie has intensity and passion, but is too long and stereotyped. The platoon is run by a rude but effective sergeant with a scar, Barnes, who often does not even consult with the commander. The only one who doesn't take orders from him is Elias, an experience and much more humane soldier. Barnes takes a few of the soldier with him for a mission in the jungle. Taylor is inexperienced and not very motivated. When the Vietnamese attack the camp, he is petrified and almost lets them surprise everybody. He gets a little scratch and almost faints. Back to the barracks, he is assigned to humble chores, is initiated to drugs by Elias. Again in the jungle, they find one of them tortured by the vietnamese. Elias behaves like a native of the jungle. Later they stumble into a village. The Americans terrorize the peasants. Even Taylor loses his temper and terrorizes a young man who was hiding. The kid is half blind. Taylor breaks down. Another soldier smashes the skull of the kid and then jokes about it. The evil Barnes is interrogating a man when the wife intervenes and starts shouting. Barnes shoots her. The daughter of the dead woman starts screaming. Barnes grabs the child and threatens to shoot her too if the man does not talk. Elias arrives just in time and jumps on Barnes. The two fight like animals until the commander stops them and commands them to burn the village. The Americans leave the smoking ruins of the village. Back to the barracks, Elias wants Barnes courtmartialed, but the matter is postponed by the superiors. The groups splits in two: the animals who side with Barnes, and the humans who side with Elias. The platoon falls in an ambush. The casualties are heavy and it rains. Taylor gets carried away. Elias is leading the charge. Barnes orders Taylor and the others to withdraw and promises to alert Elias. Elias is alone fighting the enemy like a lion, and Barnes is following him. Barnes shoots Elias who is smiling at him. Taylor, who sensed trouble, arrives too late: Barnes tells him that Elias is dead and that they have to leave. Everybody leaves on the helicopters, but as they are taking off they see one of their man running, chased by the vietnamese: it's Elias, still alive, who would have escaped if they had not taken off. Taylor tells the other soldiers what happened, that Barnes is responsible for Elias' death. Then the real battle erupts. The vietcong overrun the Americans and massacre almost all of them. Even in the middle of the battle, Barnes proves to be an animal and almost kills Taylor. The Americans bomb the area to stop the advance of the vietcongs, and this saves Taylor's life. When he comes to life again, he is surrounded by corpses. He wanders through the mass of corpses until he finds Barnes, wounded but still alive. Taylor executes Barnes in cold blood. Taylor is one of the few survivors, is rescued by a patrol and is transported to a military hospital. The villagers are petrified. The two sergeants represent two different views of war. One is a crusader, an idealist who knows what the war is all about; the other is "reality", as he puts it: war's real face is an animal fight for survival and domination. The vietcongs, whom would be the true enemies, remain anonymous, reduced to natural catastrophe, like the rains and the snakes. The true enemies, the ones with a face and a name, are within the platoon itself. It is within the platoon that the real war is fought, between a meaning of life and another. Wall Street (USA 1987) e` ambientato nel mondo della borsa ed e` un atto d'accusa nei confronti del materialismo esasperato. Then came Talk Radio (1988), an adaptation of Eric Bogosian's play, the Vietnam War movie Born on the Fourth of July (1989), the biopic The Doors (1991), the historical reconstruction JFK (1991), and the third Vietnam War movie, Heaven & Earth (1993). The hyper-violent Natural Born Killers (1994), scripted by Quentin Tarantino, a story of a psychopathic couple on the run, feels like a cross between Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde and a zombie movie. The camera and the montage move hysterically, perfectly replicating the state of mind of a psychopath. The camera shoots from all sorts of angles. The montage even throws in some cartoons Black-and-white and color alternate for no particular reason other than to disorient the viewer. Plenty of visual effects evoke demons, drugs and shamanic visions. This was by far Stone's most creative use of the medium. The film is poem of human insanity but also a grotesque satire of the media and of its audience. And it's really two films in one: the first hour is a road movie, about the murder rampage by the couple, and it's brutal enough, but pales in comparison with the second hour, the prison movie, which is even more brutal. The second one is the one that unleashes a farcical venom on the media and the authorities, pivoting around the caricatural characters of the warden, the detective and the TV reporter. One year later Jack, who has become a celebrity as the man who captured the two most famous killers in the world, visits the prison where they are detained, escorted by warden Dwight, another man who looks as psychotic as the killers. During their walk into the prison we see a fresco of hell, with prisoners tortured and locked in cage-like cells. Dwight and his cops are full of hate and disgust for their prisoners. Jack tells Dwight how he became a cop after his mother was killed in front of him when he was a child. Jack is charged with transporting the duo to a mental hospital and Dwight wants him to kill them with the excuse that they tried to escape. Swight shows Jack that Mallory has gone completely mad. Meanwhile, Wayne the TV reporter is meeting with Mickey, trying very hard to convince him to give a live interview. Mickey finally accepts. Jack and Dwight are watching and listening outside the cell. Dwight explains that he has no choice but to consent. Then Wayne interviews a psychologist, Emil, who tells him his diagnosis of Mickey and Mallory, not crazy but psychos. Wayne is in trouble with his wife who found out his love affair with a woman called Ming. Finally the live interview begins. Mickey gets furious when Wayne insinuates that he killed his own father as a child (but we see in a flashback that is really did). Then Mickey explains his delirious philosophy of murder, claiming that everybody has a demon inside, and only love can kill the demon. The whole prison is watching the live broadcast, the prisoners are hypnotized by Mickey's eloquence. Families at home are also watching. During the break we see another Coca Cola commercial. Meanwhile, Jack is visiting Mallory alone. The guards warn him in vain that she's a killer animal. He is attracted to her and she easily seduces him. The prisoners, galvanized by Mickey's words, start a riot. Dwight the warden orders that the live broadcasting stops but Mickey grabs a gun from one of the cops and shoots his way out, followed by Wayne and the surviving crew (indifferent to the fact that two of his cameramen have been killed in the shootout). Wayne keeps following Mickey and filming as Mickey goes on a murdering rampage as he heads towards Mallory's cell and hell erupts in the prison because of the rioting prisoners. Meanwhile, Mallory has attacked Jack like a wild animal. The guards save him but then Mickey arrives, kills the guards and Mallory kills Jack. Wayne keeps broadcasting live from the prison to the nation, now following Mickey and Mallory as they walk out shooting cops right and left. Meanwhile, Dwight is trying in vain to restore order in the prison, where informers and cops are being hanged and thrown into ovens by the rioting prisoners. Wayne, whose entire crew is now dead, not only follows Mickey and Mallory personally filming them live, but even grabs a gun and starts shooting cops himself. A prisoner called Owen helps them to the exit. Mickey and Mallory use a cop and Wayne himself as shields. Wayne is so excited by his new life as a criminal that he calls his wife to dump her; but then he is dumped by his lover Ming. The trio finally walks out of the prison (through a gate on which a cop has been crucified) while the prisoners capture the warden and decapitate him. After reaching the woods, Mallory films Wayne (now covered in blood) telling his live audience how he joined the killers. He then films Mickey and Mallory kissing and celebrating their freedom. But then Mickey informs him that they have to kill him. Wayne object that they always leave one witness behind to document their crimes. Mickey replies that the camera is still rolling: the whole nation is the witness to the execution of Wayne. Wayne then stops begging for his life and accepts to be killed live on TV. The film ends with Mickey and Mallory now parents of three children traveling in a trailer through the country. It was followed by the biopic Nixon (1995), the road movie U Turn (1997), Any Given Sunday (1999), the historical Alexander (2004), revised as a 3-hour 37-minute epic Alexander Revisited, World Trade Center (2006) about the September 11 terrorist attacks, the biopic W (2008), the sequel Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps (2010), Savages (2012), an adaptation of Don Winslow's novel, the biopic Snowden (2016), etc. |
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