This was the film which effectively broke Oliver Stone as a director, to the wider public. In this period - back before he started messing around with ridiculous over-editing and changing film stock for every shot, and having baffling scenes from Ben Hur playing while football managers argue with each other - Stone churned out quality movies. 'Salvador', 'Platoon' and 'Wall Street' literally in the space of about 18 months. 'Salvador' is my favourite of the three.
The movie is sort of like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' crashing into 'Apocalypse Now'. It frequently lurches from horror to hilarity and back again in the space of a few seconds. James Woods, in one of his many borderline psychotic early roles, is absolutely rabid as the jaded, down and out reporter who makes a road trip down to El Salvador with his best mate - James Belushi, in an unsettling but perfectly cast role which teeters between comedy, self-destructive debauchery and redemption.
'Salvador' isn't huge on plot. It's a fairly chaotic mess, which really makes it a perfect newsreel of what was happening in El Salvador in 1980-81, as the US government threw military aid at a psychopathic right-wing government merely because they're 'not communists'.
The film, perhaps unavoidably, gets a tiny bit preachy at times, and there is one scene where Woods comes across just a little too hand-on-his-heart, but overall this was before Stone got it into his head that everything he made was some sort of definitive statement about the American consciousness; that he was the biographer of America's psyche or something.
Quite probably your political leanings will colour your reaction to this movie, and whatever the case, if you don't remember that period (which I barely do), a little homework might be in order before you watch it. What you'll see, in my view, is one of Stone's best films. A movie that is almost relentlessly gripping and constantly charged with a sense of impending horror. And through this maelstrom, James Woods' unforgettable, Oscar-nominated, performance, which at times is so frighteningly natural that it's easy to imagine them sedating him and locking him up in his trailer between takes.
Not a masterpiece, but still a must-see film - which you could say about so many Oliver Stone movies.
The movie is sort of like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' crashing into 'Apocalypse Now'. It frequently lurches from horror to hilarity and back again in the space of a few seconds. James Woods, in one of his many borderline psychotic early roles, is absolutely rabid as the jaded, down and out reporter who makes a road trip down to El Salvador with his best mate - James Belushi, in an unsettling but perfectly cast role which teeters between comedy, self-destructive debauchery and redemption.
'Salvador' isn't huge on plot. It's a fairly chaotic mess, which really makes it a perfect newsreel of what was happening in El Salvador in 1980-81, as the US government threw military aid at a psychopathic right-wing government merely because they're 'not communists'.
The film, perhaps unavoidably, gets a tiny bit preachy at times, and there is one scene where Woods comes across just a little too hand-on-his-heart, but overall this was before Stone got it into his head that everything he made was some sort of definitive statement about the American consciousness; that he was the biographer of America's psyche or something.
Quite probably your political leanings will colour your reaction to this movie, and whatever the case, if you don't remember that period (which I barely do), a little homework might be in order before you watch it. What you'll see, in my view, is one of Stone's best films. A movie that is almost relentlessly gripping and constantly charged with a sense of impending horror. And through this maelstrom, James Woods' unforgettable, Oscar-nominated, performance, which at times is so frighteningly natural that it's easy to imagine them sedating him and locking him up in his trailer between takes.
Not a masterpiece, but still a must-see film - which you could say about so many Oliver Stone movies.