Salvador (1986)

 

Salvador

This was a difficult one to get through. A combo of unlikable characters, depraved violence and human misery makes this a movie I did not want to get engaged in and yet it is difficult to ignore it.

Richard Boyle (James Woods) is a washed-up journalist who finds his life options reduced to return to El Salvador, a place he previously enjoyed (meaning women, drugs, alcohol and anarchistic laws). He brings along his friend Dr. Rock (James Belushi), a San Francisco DJ on the promise of those very things.

In El Salvador a civil war is brewing and while Boyle’s sympathies are on the side of the guerilla, he mingles with the right-wind government for stories and favours. He is also part of the US community in the country centred on the sympathetically described ambassador (Michael Murphy).

As the movie progresses things worsen. Boyle and his journalist friend John Cassady (John Savage) find piles of dead bodies, victims of the death squads, Boyle’s girlfriend’s, Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), brother is arrested and killed, the Archbishop of El Salvador is murdered and the civil war heats up into a shooting war with fighting in the streets. US agents are supporting the military leaders behind the back of the ambassador on the argument that the guerrilla is socialist and therefore communist. In short, everything unravels.

Especially poignant is the rape and murder of four nuns, one of which was Boyle’s friend. Boyle himself is becoming a target and must flee.

I am not certain of the veracity of this movie. The behind-the-scenes featurette seem to claim that everything is 1-to-1 reality. The real Richard Boyle is even co-scriptwriter. On Wikipedia, however, much of it is claimed to be exaggerations, particularly concerning Boyle and those around him. I do not know anything about the civil war there, but I find it difficult to not believe the general chaos, destruction and human misery. It seems to be par for the course with military dictatorships. Boyle, though, is described as an utterly despicable character. Egoistic, lazy and arrogant, it is very hard to find anything redeeming about him and given he was written partly by the real Boyle, he comes through almost cartoonish. Certainly, I disliked him from the first minute and when he eventually got in trouble, found it hard to care.

Boyle does get to the point where here cares for something else. These being Maria and the people of El Salvador as a whole, but even then, his attitudes make it difficult to accept this as redemption of the character. By then I had long stopped caring about him.

The depiction of the horrors in El Salvador is very much in your face. What is happening there is ugly and brutal and so devoid of humanity that it must be what hell is like. There is a brutal awakening also when we learn that the guerillas are no better than the military in brutality. Whoever wins will rule a desolate world.

All this may be an argument for watching the movie, that this is important, but what is really the message here? The message I get is that this is a mess you need to stay away from. No matter who you chose to support, you will be part of the destruction because there are no saints. Saints are being raped and butchered.

If the protagonist had been less bankrupt, I could have followed the movie and even recommended it. As it was, I could not wait to get it over with, cross it off the list and be done. Apparently, the audience at the box office thought the same and the movie tanked. My guess is that Oliver Stone learned his lesson before he went on to make “Platoon”.