Salvador (1986)

John Chard September 25, 2014

★ 9/10

You've become just like them. Based around the real life experiences of journalist Richard Boyle, we are in 1980 and Boyle is not only in crisis torn El Salvador, he's also in it up to his neck. It sometimes gets forgotten just what a great director Oliver Stone can be, strip away his ability to ruffle feathers on a seemingly perennial basis, and you find some pieces of work that are stark and striking for all the right reasons. Salvador is one such film, sometimes criminally forgotten, it remains to this day a searing tale of tension amongst the troubles of a Latin American hell hole. Boyle is right in amongst the implosion of a civil war, death squads and guerrillas from each side pull him from pillar to post as he tries to protect his Salvadorian girlfriend, while his friends and connections all are in peril purely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Salvador triu…

GenerationofSwine January 14, 2023

★ 10/10

With almost all things Oliver Stone...it gets political, and because of that you have people reviewing the politics and NOT the movie. Hate it or love it because of the politics... ...and politically I agree with the message in Salvador, but I'm going to try to keep all of that out of this and too the side. However, I do want to mention that the film dramatizes a few stories that should have gotten better coverage in the US. Moving on, though, this is not unlike Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...if it went entirely dark and realistic. You have a journalist and his buddy in a Hawaiian T-Shirt not going to the glitz and glam of Vegas in search of the American Dream, but rather going to Central America in search of the American financed atrocities. And it is vaguely based on a true story and vaguely covers actual events from a dramatized perspective while asking the audience to be m…