•
Rating: My three favorite films by Oliver Stone are obviously Platoon, Wall Street, and Born on the Fourth of July. All three films have been directed with great precision, showing the reality that hides behind the myths of war heroes and high finance. He can be described as a socially engaged director, with a strong inclination towards realistic films and a tendency to expose the system. Already in Platoon, Stone showed how skilled he is at shooting scenes of states of mental hallucination, obviously referring to the scene where Charlie Sheen and William Dafoe smoke marijuana through the barrel of a rifle in Vietnam.
However, I was surprised by Stone from the very beginning of this film. The entire movie presents itself as a dreamlike journey, with all the grotesque characters revolving around the two anti-hero protagonists. There isn’t a single positive character in this film. It’s a parade of physical and sexual violence almost at the pace of a music video, where the director has masterfully mixed various visual genres, including animated drawing. In the end, it turned out to be the most beautiful satirical film on violence in contemporary America.
The plot is very simple. A boy meets a girl. He is a butcher, psychologically unstable for unknown reasons. She is psychologically unstable because she was raped by her perverted father. They decide to get together and travel across America, killing anyone they encounter, depending on their mood. It seems like a very banal B-movie story. But the beauty is that it seems banal, but in reality, it is a powerful satire, which will leave the intelligent viewer without a moment of respite in every scene, making them continuously swallow even hidden philosophical information.
An important fact of interest for cinephiles is that the original screenplay was written by Quentin Tarantino. The screenplay contained several scenes and dialogues of the same type present in Pulp Fiction. Oliver Stone discarded parts of the original screenplay, focusing more on violence than on dialogues. I have never read Tarantino’s original screenplay, but I must say that I’m fine with the edited version by Stone. I liked the film just as Stone decided. However, I'm sorry if some of Tarantino's brilliant dialogues have been lost.
In the end, I can add that critics were divided. Some said it’s brilliant, others said it turned out badly. Having seen it, I side with those critics who called the film brilliant. I don’t know why someone might dismiss this brilliant film. Perhaps due to an excessive sense of propriety towards the orgy of violence and sex present in the film. Anyway, I am 100% normal, and I think the film is exceptional, both in form and in substance.
I don’t want to talk much about the film so as not to reveal the content, because it’s better to watch it without knowing absolutely anything.
So, to sum up, an essential film, definitely a must-see, and to be added to the video library.
Another masterpiece by Oliver Stone that exposes society.
Loading comments slowly
