Oliver Stone moves away from politics. Is that a good thing?
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It’s been a long time since Oliver Stone has made a film about a subject that isn’t rooted in fact. Eleven years, actually, during which time he explored Latin American leaders (‘South of the Border’), the global financial collapse (‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’), the U.S. war in Iraq (‘W.’) and Sept. 11 (‘World Trade Center’).
Now, with several outlets reporting that Universal Pictures is poised to finance and distribute Stone’s ‘Savages,’ a thriller involving pot growers that could shoot as early as this summer, Stone takes a step back from explicit politics. The movie, which so far stars Aaron Johnson and Benicio del Toro, centers on a pair of marijuana growers so adept that a drug cartel kidnaps their female friend to force the growers to work for them.
Anytime Oliver Stone is concerned, his own history inevitably becomes both a selling point and hurdle for marketers (one can imagine the director’s own admission to past drug use will surface as this movie is rolled out). But how will the film itself turn out?
Some online commentators have begun to cheer Stone’s departure from politics, though when you consider the director’s last three movies not rooted in recent history (‘Alexander,’ ‘Any Given Sunday,’ ‘U Turn’), it remains to be seen whether that deviation is a good thing.
In fact, his most influential and perhaps best work comes when he makes films that are animated by the zeitgeist but just aren’t freighted by historical details -- the Vietnam War cultural digestion of ‘Platoon,’ media-age violence in ‘Natural Born Killers,’ the master-of-the-universe bravado of ‘Wall Street.’
In that sense, at least, the marijuana-trade setting of ‘Savages’ fits right in.
-- Steven Zeitchik
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