Salvador

Oliver Stone, USA 1986, 123 minutes

Ranking alongside Platoon and The Doors as one of Stone's best films, this focuses on an oft-overlooked aspect of war - the accidental tourist, he who experiences war as an outsider. Here that person is Richard Boyle (James Woods), a cynical journalist who sees war torn El Salvador as a money-spinning photo opportunity until inevitably the conflict affects him in ways he had never foreseen.

An outcast in his native city and workplace, Boyle takes his friend Doc (James Belushi) on what they imagine will be an opportunity to get rich, get laid and get the hell out. They soon find, however, that the loot they are after has already been taken, El Salvador has already been raped and pillaged as far as possible. Here his transformation occurs - he is an American, a man with power, as everyone around him realises. He doesn't want to help, he doesn't have to help but he finds himself compelled to, his humanity rises to the surface and he starts to do all he can. By the end of the film, though, his ability has run out and he becomes like everyone else - an opportunist survivor.

A brutally compelling piece of work, this film destroys the preconception that status guarantees safety and privilege as well as showing that it is not a black-and-white world. Boyle's silence only results in violence, so he constantly shifts between good and evil, between oppressor and oppressed, unable to sit on the fence.

Appropriate for a film that succeeds in being by turns harrowing and moving, brutal and rewarding.

"As raw, difficult, compelling, unreasonable, reckless, and vivid as its protagonist..." - Variety

Review by Andrew Hesketh
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97