Salvador ***** (1986, James Woods, James Belushi, Michael Murphy, John Savage) – Classic Movie Review 2076

Co-writer/director Oliver Stone’s brilliantly fired-up, exhilarating 1986 political thriller is a report from troubled Central America and is based on the real-life adventures of American photo-journalist Richard Boyle (played by a sizzling James Woods) who is covering the Salvadoran Civil War in war-torn Salvador circa 1980. Down on his luck in the US, Boyle drives to El Salvador to chronicle the events of the 1980 military dictatorship and becomes entangled with both leftist guerrillas and the right-wing military.

It works brilliantly on three levels, as a fast-paced, gritty adventure thriller, as a study at the chaos America is subsidise with its foreign policies, and as a character portrait of a couple of engagingly burned-out freelancers just trying to survive the storm.

It is directed by Stone, who had won an Oscar for the screenplay for Midnight Express but it was just before he hit the big time with Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July, and it’s his neglected masterpiece, arguably better than any of them.  Woods is astonishingly powerful as the crazed reporter, all manic, scary and heroic at the same time, and he was deservedly Oscar-nominated as Best Actor, while James Belushi is the perfect foil for him as Doctor Rock, all sweaty, sleazy and dangerous.

The movie’s serious side is that the script makes no bones about sympathising with the left-wing revolutionaries and being critical of the US-supported military, focusing on the murder of four American churchwomen, including Jean Donovan, and their assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero by death squads, which Boyle is covering.

But Stone keeps the action and drama boiling furiously, while mounting scathing attacks on the Salvadorian government’s injustice to its people and on the United States’ ignorance of politics and what’s happening on its own doorstep. It is hardly surprising then that audiences in America didn’t exactly embrace it wholeheartedly and that it wasn’t a hit there. It scraped only $1.5million at the US box office.

But it had great critical acclaim and Stone’s angry screenplay, co-written with the real Rick Boyle, was Oscar-nominated for Best Original Screenplay. It did wonders for his reputation, though not for production company Hemdale’s bank account. Nevertheless, Hemdale stuck with Stone, and reaped the reward big time with his next film, the money-spinning blockbuster Platoon.

Also in the cast are Michael Murphy, John Savage, Elpidia Carrillo, Tony Plana, Colby Chester, Cynthia Gibb, Will MacMillan, Valerie Wildman, José Carlos Ruiz, Jorge Luke, Juan Fernandez, Salvador Sánchez, Rosario Zuniga, Martin Fientes and Gary Farr.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2076

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