Salvador
For decades, the actions of paramilitary troops in what can be considered “uncivilized” countries has been nothing short of barbaric, with near daily atrocities committed including executions, beheadings and rape. What might be even more disturbing though, is when any one of the major countries in the world (including obviously The United States) decides that in all of their godlike wisdom that they are going to “pick a side” so to speak and then supply that side with weapons, money and training, something that has literally been going on since forever and only because that country sees some sort of benefit to themselves in doing so. As stated, The United States Of America has been the worst offender in this regard with countless examples going back a very, very long time. In the case of the civil war in El Salvador in 1980, what was thought of as being a “peasant uprising” was in actuality a genuine Communist revolution (which was sponsored by Castro’s Cuba) designed to help secure Communist control over all of Latin America (with several other countries in the region also considered to be strategic checkpoints) and since our country (still coming off the sting of Vietnam) didn’t want the Communists controlling us from across the Pacific (Russia) or from the the south of us either, the decision was made to sponsor the “right wing” paramilitary controlling government and give them free reign to handle the Commies in any manner that they wished, bringing on the advent of so called death squads, public executions in the streets and a large number of “disappearances” where everyone pretty much knew what had happened to the missing person in question. The only thing that America had to worry about amongst all of this slaughter was that of (what else?) liberal, left wing war correspondents and photojournalists such as Richard Boyle, a guy who had been through the shit in Vietnam and now saw this as America’s attempt to get other guys to do the dirty work for us. In 1986 Boyle collaborated on a script with Oliver Stone about this situation which Stone would direct into a full length feature all while bearing in mind that Stone himself was not a legend just YET, having only directed two low budget horror films at that point in his career and who wound up shooting this film in Mexico on a very low budget, approaching the project as his make or break film in order to move his career on to greater heights. In the lead role of Richard Boyle, Stone actually tried to get Marlon Brando to sign on, but Brando’s recent weight gain and newfound ambivalence towards acting in general unless it suited him at whatever current moment meant that this casting endeavor would be a no go for Stone. Instead he got James Woods, himself a legendary actor who (unlike Brando) was in the absolute prime of his career at that point, to play Boyle and the patented Woods style of edgy, hyberkinetic acting suited much of the material to a tee, earning him his only Oscar Nomination for Best Actor In A Leading Role (and making us wonder just exactly why Stone would actually think that Brando’s more presumably measured approach would work here). Indeed, prior to filming, Woods sat down to have dinner with the real Richard Boyle in order to pick his brain and wound up admitting later to seriously disliking the man, but still put on his professional boots and went on to give a fine performance. The movie begins with Woods living in a crappy San Francisco apartment with a wife and kid only to find themselves being evicted and his wife taking the kid and leaving him. Knowing that things are about to break loose in El Salvador and seeing it as his last chance to pull things together, he finds himself derailed by an arrest for unpaid parking tickets and is bailed out by his best buddy, Dr. Rock (James Belushi), a rock and roll disc jockey whose real name is never revealed over the course of the film. Upon realizing that Belushi has been thrown out by his own wife, Woods convinces him right then and there to head down with him to El Salvador by stating that it will be nothing but a never ending party with the most beautiful and willing women imaginable and also where “you can get a virgin to sit on your face for seven dollars.” Belushi agrees, but just the presence of Jim Belushi in this role helps set a bit of an uneven tone because it makes the movie start off as being almost a Fear And Loathing type buddy road comedy (complete with a red Convertible and the two of them doing drugs during the trip down), but with Belushi appearing to be the comedic sidekick (in a drama) looking terribly fat and out of shape before he slimmed down in later years, it turns out that the Dr. Rock character (who has no stake in the war or the politics at hand) basically becomes a completely useless part of the film, with Belushi screaming a lot of obscenities at the top of his lungs (which really isn’t funny) before fading more and more in and out of the narrative itself whenever he’s needed (his only notable act is in hooking up with a ten dollar prostitute) and just blubbers his way into being a boring side character while the buddy / sidekick role in large part is transferred over to John Savage as another photojournalist who takes his work very seriously and allows his old friend Woods to tag along with him to document some of the local atrocities on hand. Woods also hooks up with an old local girlfriend of his (Elpidia Carrillo, a.k.a. “the girl from Predator”) whom he decides that he wants to marry, hangs out with a supercute Relief Worker (Cynthia Gibb) who’s destined for a horrible fate and has it out with the local military authorities over their own actions (thus making himself a marked man as well). There is also the dealings of the Woods character with the American Ambassador (Michael Murphy) and the U.S. military commanders where Stone’s heavy handed dialogue condemning any and all American conservative interests in the region is poured on pretty hard and thick, although commendably Stone does show some fairness by displaying some war crime atrocities also being committed by The Communists (who probably invented such tactics for which the paramilitary forces just decided to try and outdo them) in order to prove that both sides here really were bona fide savages in a scenario where our country just decided to back up the (slightly) more nobler side. That being said, the film does boast a rather meandering pace (especially in the first half) with the characters just walking into random situations while Woods (who was said to have clashed heavily on the set with Stone) seems to put more passion into his acting with the bits concerning his little romance with the girl whom he wants nothing more than to bring her back to America so that she can live a better life than the one she has in miserable old El Salvador (where ironically The Catholic Church carries a HUGE amount of clout). And the closing scenes with their “one crisis after another” motif with Woods constantly needing to find a way out of trouble wears the viewer’s nerves a bit thin. Stone of course was a very short distance away from starting to churn out modern classics at an alarming rate, but here one can see the way he was getting more and more comfortable with the whole filmmaking process (including his fairmindedness towards direct political rhetoric, something that despite his known liberal leanings has always been one of the more commendable aspects of his career) while turning James Woods loose in a tension filled storyline where the U.S. backed paramilitary leader (Tony Plana) just represents many of the same kinds of leaders who were mostly monsters in their own right, but they were also seen as being monsters whom we could control. Even as the third world uncivilized countries where life is very cheap continue to exist today, such is also the unpleasant reality that sometimes a superpower country like ourselves have to get in bed with these types of monsters (let’s not forget Stalin in WWII) in order to achieve our ends without passing judgment on those who destroy countless lives so that we may conquer an even greater evil and try to maintain some kind of greater balance in the world…
7/10