Oliver Stone is a smart Hollywood director. He understands well how to manipulate film surfaces. Unfortunately, his adeptness stops there. Meaning that he is not terribly perceptive or probing in his analysis He is only one mirror in a room of mirrors actually a room of smoke and mirrors and the world beyond this Hollywood illusion is little more than a clever dialogue between the dummy talking to his master. It's unfortunate that these discussions seem so totally dominated by dead-end *reviews* of the latest box office stars. Criticism at least as it manifests itself here seems unable to bridge the gulf between an illusory reality andand that other *reality* we call the real world. Where does the problem lie? Allan Chicago