Salvador

Going back and watching Salvador makes me realize how long it's been since Oliver Stone has been on his game. How long has it been since he made a film that actually required the audience to think. It's not that he's suddenly become loud and bombastic, it's that he's suddenly stopped doing anything genuinely provocative. Natural Born Killers, for example, is *not* a provocative film. It's a loud and angry and aggressive film. However, the film produced only attacks on the filmmaker (or rather excessive adulation for Stone) and never really stimulated an intelligent national debate. But Salvador, based on the true experiences of photojournalist Rick Boyle, is Stone at his best. It's complicated and full of the mixture of regret, guilt, nostalgia, and outrage that fill the director's landmarks (JFK or Platoon, for example). After all of the violence and horror, it becomes a film about representations of reality and the different reasons for distorting truth.

Rick Boyle (James Woods) is at the end of his rope. He's unemployed, his wife just left him. And he's just been thrown in jail for a litany of driving violations. After getting bailed out by his tubby friend Doctor Rock (James Belushi in the role he was probably born to play), he hops in his unregistered car that he isn't licensed to drive, and he heads south to El Salvador. His only companions are Doctor Jack, his alcohol, and his drugs on a journey that can't help but be likened to the drive to Vegas in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When he arrives in El Salvador, he finds the country torn apart with leftist rebels fleeing to the hills and a country braced for a bloody "democratic" election in which a murderous American puppet general will likely be elected. Boyle tries to use his connections to get a press pass and get one last shot to become a success. This is made easier by the Salvadorian woman who loves him and the ace photographer who lends him a hand (John Savage).

But not everybody in El Salvador is supportive of the loose cannon journalist. There's the colonel who thinks he's a communist, the military attache who's using him for information, and the local military forces who resent the way Boyle depicted them in a previous campaign. The audience is supposed to be disgusted by the way that Boyle treats himself and those he loves, but there's one important fact that's repeated over and over: Boyle was the last journalist out of Cambodia. We know that he stayed to help save people. And it's just a matter of time before he becomes even more personally invested in what's happening in Central America. And that's when things go really crazy.

The world of photojournalism depicted in the film is one step from public relations and sometimes not even that. Boyle's major supported among the military leaders is a general about whom Boyle had written a glowing profile. Boyle is also able to curry favor by showing his pictures to American military leaders before trying to publish them. The question that comes up, of course, is why are the pictures being taken at all and how can anybody ever know the truth of any war. Journalists, like everybody else, get caught up in their surroundings. Boyle may be supporting the right side in El Salvador, but he admits to having favored Pol Pot for a brief period years earlier. The difference between canonizing a truly noble leader (like the assassinated Archbishop Romero) and elevating a genocidal lunatic is a small one. Salvador calls into question how American audiences can ever know who to trust in a media covered war. On one hand we have Pauline Axelrod (Valerie Wildman) appearing on air because she's pretty and blond even though she just accepts the official statements as truth. Then there's also Savage's journalist who's willing to do anything to get the perfect shot, to create an image that shows both the conflict and the reasons behind it in a single frame. Idealism and self preservation are competing instincts.

The film is pure Stone. The battle sequences are tense and tightly edited and the dialogue (which Stone cowrote with Rick Boyle) is rippingly good, for the most part. Then again, its misogyny is almost worn as a gold star, female characters are, as always, Madonnas or whores, and a rape scene is fairly exploitative. Also in a conversation between Boyle and a conservative US Colonel, Stone unpacks entirely too much of his personal ideology in a series of monologues. The message of the film, about not wanted to create another Vietnam and liberalism not being the same as Communism is much too literally articulated.

The film basically hinges on Woods's wonderful performance. His typical manic energy perfectly fits his character's earliest incarnation, but as Boyle becomes more troubled by what he sees around him, Woods's performance becomes deeper, richer, and more internalized. The rest of the cast has less to do and thus can't really be blamed for not standing out. Belushi's Doctor Jack has "Fictitious Composite Character" written all over him. Basically we watch as his story arc goes in opposite directions from Woods's at all times.

Salvador is perhaps the only film to ever express nostalgia for Jimmy Carter. I like that. I like that it's challenging, dogmatic, but rarely insults my intelligence by saying things that I already know. This is a very fine 8/10 film.

In the beginning the viewer thinks he has stumbled upon a road-trip gone wrong movie; this initial impression is strengthened by the presence of James Belushi, in a fantastic comedic/dramatic role. However, Stone ratchets up the tension in this political thriller as events escalate and force the protagonists to make difficult choices and take sides... an incredible film and memorable performances by Belushi and James Woods, who plays the ultimate cynic. a must see film.

Compelling civil war drama by Oliver Stone with a great James Woods (as well as a great Jim Belushi). Stone's best films have always been his highly political ones, and this is no exception. Brutal, realistic portrayal of the conflict in El Salvador and America's implications. This is one to re-discover by film fans as it seems to have fallen a bit into obscurity over the years. Highly recommended: 8 stars out of 10.

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

imdb.com/list/ls070242495

I'm not a huge Oliver Stone fan, I rented this because James Woods is so entertaining, but the movie itself was pretty good, too. The movies I liked that Stone directed didn't have a big political message, like U-Turn, The Doors, and Natural Born Killers (ok, that last one was slightly political) There was one scene in this where Woods and Savage were taking photos of a huge amount of dead bodies in a dump, and there's a subtitle saying "Blah-blah, dumping ground for corpses killed by death squads" (or something similar) Oh really? Thanks for the explanation Mr. Stone, I would have thought they were at the zoo. I probably wasn't supposed to find this movie as funny as I did, but God James Woods was so funny. It's just his timing, or the way he says stuff, or something, but he just totally steals the movie. He can just roll his eyes and I start cracking up. If it had a different actor in the starring role who wasn't as entertaining, I doubt I would have watched it so many times. He was definitely robbed of a Best Actor Oscar for this movie--there's a scene near the start of the movie where he is barreling down the street in his crappy car and gets pulled over, that made me laugh so hard I played it back for my husband. Some of the scenes where they are driving down to Mexico are very Hunter S. Thompson-esque. The scene in the confessional where he asks the priest if it would still be okay to take a few hits of a joint once in a while is priceless. If you're a Woods fan, what are you waiting for? Get a copy fast! I can't imagine any other actor in the role, the other acting in the film is great, but he just acts circles around everyone else. Oh yeah, and the movie itself is great, very emotional. You do care about the characters, even the sleazy ones. Woods is strangely attractive in a seedy sort of way. The ending also was unpredictable, and there a several scary, very tense scenes. One more thing--watch for John Doe of the punk band X in a small cameo as a restaurant owner-va va va voom!!!

Having seen this movie more than ten times, over the last decade and one half, it as taken on many shades of meaning, but it continues to show how the more things change the more they stay the same. The reporter's sense of gathering news seems to be one of self-sacrifice and a search for truth however, the director shows how the American reporter possesses a quixotic sense of right and wrong that is overwhelmed by self-interest and self-indulgence not unlike the American public. He is unable to report with the clarity of a John Reed. Other points of interest are the visuals of the local life of peasants, who just want to live. They are shown to be no different than the peasants of Chile or Vietnam. Contrasting this life is the ruling elite that manipulates the meaning of the simple needs of the peasants into an ideology that threatens the middle class and the business interests that exploit the resources of this third world country. When the environment becomes so intolerable that the peasants begin to revolt, the forces of the ruling elite call on the American military might to help quell the rebellion. Here we discover the atrocities that become the daily part of life and bring the audience emotions out of its dispassionate viewpoint into one that feels the helplessness of a beaten people.

It seems to me that the director was more into making a movie than selling tickets. For this we are grateful. This movie is as fresh with insight and meaning as it was when it was released. Dr. Zim Robert