Salvador

This DVD captures the precise moment before Oliver Stone became ”Oliver Stone”; as such, it is a useful corrective to the myth. The little remembered Salvador is agitprop of a passionate, scabrously comic order, with James Woods playing real-life gonzo journo Richard Boyle carousing his way through the terrors of the U.S. involvement in El Salvador. The director’s commentary offers Stone waxing semi-profound on various sociopolitical issues, but a tart making-of documentary makes the better case for what Stone calls a ”renegade” film — and the deleted scenes contain an astounding orgy and exposition sequence that proves how far the director was willing to push. It serves as testimony to the ghosts that continue to haunt such men as ex-senator Bob Kerrey.