10 Underrated Movies By Great Directors

Oliver Stone is predominantly known for two loosely linked trilogies - his Vietnam War pieces, beginning with Platoon, which drew on his real-life experiences as an infantryman and are staunchly critical of the reasoning for the conflict and its effects on servicemen and the Vietnamese themselves, and his films about Presidents, two of them biopics (Nixon and W. (Bush)) and one of them a conspiracy-laden take on the Kennedy assassination.

Nearly all of his other films are commentaries on American foreign policy and society, such as the effects of unchecked capitalism (Wall Street) and the media's fascination with mass murder (Natural Born Killers).

In recent years, Stone has made a number of documentaries about Latin and South America, having always been critical of his country's support of brutal and oppressive regimes purely because they were anti-communist. This was a subject he first examined in Salvador, the release of which attracted little attention given that it preceded Platoon (which put him on the map) by ten months.

Showcasing the Salvadorian Civil War through the eyes of real-life photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods), the film pulls no punches in its sympathy for the leftist element of the conflict. Woods thrives at playing arrogant and unlikeable characters, but his eventual pursuit of the right thing after initially seeking out the turmoil to profit from it is a strong narrative to wrap the conflict around as it deepens.