23/09/2012

Amexica, Don Winslow and Oliver Stone by Ed Vulliamy

This article by the excellent journalist Ed Vulliamy is presenting Oliver Stone next film about Mexico:

Oliver Stone tackles the drugs war in America's backyard

With his latest film Savages, the acclaimed US director turns his vision to the murderous narcotics-fuelled conflict in Mexico
Read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/sep/23/oliver-stone-interview-savages-vulliamy

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'Savages' was released on 21 September in the UK, in June in the US. It will be on September the 26th in France.

'Amexica: War Along the Borderline, the book by Ed Vulliamy on the war on drugs in the Americas is published in paperback by Vintage (you can vuy it at guardianbookshop.co.uk for £7.19 with free UK p&p).


The film "is an adaptation of a novel by the great American writer on the border and drug war, Don Winslow, about two men: Chon, a traumatised veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Ben, a karmic botanist par excellence. Their combined experience and knowledge enables them to grow marijuana of unrivalled potency and quality. It also helps them secure the devotion of lovely blonde O, whom they share as a narcotic-erotic ménage à trois". 

 The novel by the same name, 'Savages'.


I was precisely reading 'The Power of the Dog' by Don Winslow during my trip in Mexico, thanks to a friend's friend I met in Mexico City. 

An extract I found so powerful, summarizing the current fate of extraordinary Mexico:

"America wants there to be a wall along the 2,000 miles it shares with Mexico, like the one that once ran beneath the window at which Stone sits in Berlin. But that is not going to happen when the border is also the busiest commercial frontier in the world, crossed by a million people every day."

Stone has a terrifying and convincing thesis as to why the film has to be set in America, with American characters, says Vulliamy: 

"The point," he says, "is that wars come home, they come home to roost. And there are connections: one of the two main guys has come home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he's brought all that with him, what I think are new levels of cruelty and combat technology we have out there."

"Stone's conclusion focuses less on the economic backdrop in Mexico than the failure of the war on drugs", concludes Vulliamy. 



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You can see the trailer here: http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=178686.html

With Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro, John Travolta, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

More on Don Winslow (NYT, 2010): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/books/08book.html?_r=0


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