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 triumphs mainly because Stone and his team have managed to capture all the building emotions of the main players, it's not just Boyle, it's the American government types, the press itself, and of course the crumbling Salvador people themselves, all things mold together in one big worrying pot boiler. James Woods plays Boyle and he is magnificent, managing to make an unlikeable character sympathetic, Woods (with Stone prompting for sure) clearly challenging himself to play out a career high. James Belushi also delivers his career best work, perfectly brusque and oblivious, his Dr Rock is the perfect foil for Woods' emotive Boyle. Then there is plaudits for Elpidia Carillo as Maria, charged with being the love interest amongst this carnage, she layers it perfectly for a very memorable performance. Salvador bizarrely is at times a humorous picture, but the laughs are all of the uneasy kind, because ultimately Stone's attempt at getting into the nitty-gritty of troubled El Salvador, is a harsh, and at times, a humbling experience. 9/10
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 morally outraged at what they see...and it is horrific. But when you really get here is WTC and Snowden on the other end, the movies following Alexander are Stone moving away from his cinematic hallmarks that made his films so great. Salvador, but contrast, is Stone moving towards his beloved tropes, you can see him developing his technique in Salvador, and that almost works as a build-up onto itself if you're a fan of Oliver Stone's movies. The dramatic cuts, and the tidal waves of A and B list supporting characters are still a few movies away, but you have a solid development of what Stone movies will one day become, but you have it with a young Oliver Stone intensity. He was working hard back then, and it shows in Salvador. Nothing about the film is phoned in and it works if you agree with his politics or not, as a dramatic war film of the highest grade. But, don't take any of that into account if you are a film major... because what you have here is Stone, crafting a war movie, on a shoe string budget, and pulling it off brilliantly. That should be the lesson any film student walks away with. Forget what the movie was about for a moment, look at the final product and then look at what he had to work with.
The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...
Movie Star Rating : 7.2 Read More
Saleena is happily married to Mathew , a wealthy estate owner. Inexplicably she commits suicide much to the shock of Mathew. He firmly believes that there existed no reason for her to do the act and asks his journalist friend Balu to investigate why. Balu, who was also close to Saleena, tries to piece together clue from her past to figure out the answer.
Movie Star Rating : 6.9 Read More
Tito's break-up with Stalin in 1948 marked the beginning of not only confusing, but also very dangerous years for many hard-core Yugoslav communists. A careless remark about the newspaper cartoon is enough for Mesha to join many arrested unfortunates. His family is now forced to cope with the situation and wait for his release from prison.
Movie Star Rating : 7.4 Read More
Mercenary James Shannon, on a reconnaissance job to the African nation of Zangaro, is tortured and deported. He returns to lead a coup.
Movie Star Rating : 5.7 Read More
An American soldier who escapes the execution of his comrades by Japanese soldiers in Borneo during WWII becomes the leader of a personal empire among the headhunters in this war story told in the style of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The American is reluctant to rejoin the fight against the Japanese on the urging of a British commando team but conducts a war of vengeance when the Japanese attack his adopted people.
Movie Star Rating : 5.9 Read More
Gospel Hill tells the intersecting story of two men in the fictional South Carolina town of Julia. Danny Glover plays John Malcolm, the son of a slain civil rights activist. Jack Herrod (Tom Bower) is the former sheriff who never got to the bottom of the murder. Their paths begin to cross when a development corporation comes to town with plans to raze Julia's historic Gospel Hill.
Movie Star Rating : 4.8 Read More
A young boy, in an effort to have a normal childhood in 1980s El Salvador, is caught up in a dramatic fight for his life as he desperately tries to avoid the war which is raging all around him
Movie Star Rating : 8.1 Read More
An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
Movie Star Rating : 6.9 Read More
Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
Movie Star Rating : 7.9 Read More
World War II, 1943. Mallory and Miller, the heroes who destroyed the guns of Navarone, are sent to Yugoslavia in search of a ghost from the past.
Movie Star Rating : 6.2 Read More
After the death of Raya Green's sister, she gets out from her classes at school, and sees a stomp crew practicing. She meets Bishop which is the dance crew leader. She then meets Michelle and does a stomp battle with her. They become enemies then friends later on. Her uptight mom pushes her to pass the test to get into Medical school, but she thinks she failed....
Movie Star Rating : 4.4 Read More
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