SALVADOR: SPECIAL EDITION; PLATOON: SPECIAL EDITION

These DVDs capture the precise moments before and after Oliver Stone became ”Oliver Stone”; as such, they are useful correctives 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.