Oliver Stone
Le Belve

He was, is, and will be one of the most talked-about, criticized, admired, studied cinema men of recent years. Perhaps due to his personality often being over the top, perhaps because of his being "against the grain." The fact is that Oliver Stone has contributed to shaping a certain way of making cinema, starting with "Platoon" in 1986, then moving on to feature films like "Wall Street" and "Born on the Fourth of July." Then a noticeable decline in inspiration, with the exception of that perverse gem "Natural Born Killers."

As for myself, I admit that viewing "World Trade Center" years ago had completely alienated me from Stone as a director. A terribly bad work, practically rejected by everyone. Even the sequel to "Wall Street" was a puzzling move, especially if "the original" remains one of his most appreciated films. The fact is, last 2012, "Savages," Oliver Stone's latest feature, hit theaters. A title that immediately aroused interest due to the cast: the young Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson, but especially due to the presence of Salma Hayek, John Travolta and Benicio Del Toro.

A story of drugs and violence on the border between California and Mexico. Two small producers who have to deal with the Baja drug cartel, unscrupulous professionals who understand what the weak point of the two small traffickers Chon and Ben is: the beautiful Ophelia, in love with both. An indissoluble "triple love." At the moment this idyll is broken, all the certainties on which the three relied collapse. It is the beginning of a "war" of massacre made of kidnappings, threats, and killings. It is the war for survival, the war of the savages.

"Savages" (original title) is a violent film both cinematically and "visually": the photography of Daniel Mindel is sharp, bordering on documentary/videogame. In short, there is that typically contemporary aspect that gives the story a more "tech" than vintage flavor. Interesting is also the contrast between the brutality of some sequences and the interior folds of some protagonists: In this sense, the relationship between the kidnapped Ophelia and the cruel Elena (Salma Hayek) explains the double track on which Stone's film moves. A lively and tense film to the end, made vibrant by an unexpected double ending and with a voice-over (that of the beautiful Ophelia) that tells us how things went and what happened after the end of everything. Slightly subdued, however, is the screenplay by Don Winslow (author of the book from which the work is adapted) and Shane Salerno. To demonstrate this, several spats seem to have occurred between Winslow himself and Stone, with the former accusing the latter of wanting to overturn the plot too much to adapt it to his idea of cinema. There are also a few small naiveties directly related to the story: several sequences, apart from being predictable, appear evidently "fake," perhaps stemming from a basic story that, as far as the "ménage à trois" is concerned, does not fully convince.

"Savages" is a film that shows glimpses of the most uncompromising and violent Stone from his early works and that has a new impulse in step with the times. Stone stuffs everything with subplots and messages, from the idea of family, to ecology, to antiprohibitionism. Certainly, it is not a masterpiece, but the film in question is one of the best things Stone has done in the last 15 years.