In a sentenceJames Woods sweats and lies his way through a civil war and is the least frightening thing in it
El Salvador, 1980. Richard Boyle (James Woods), a photojournalist who has covered Vietnam, Cambodia and Belfast and is now broke in San Francisco, drives south with Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi), an out-of-work disc jockey, because a war is cheap to live beside and pays if you can sell it. At the border the army pulls them off the road at gunpoint. In San Salvador Boyle looks for Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), the woman he left behind, and for work. He finds John Cassady (John Savage), a photographer who goes wherever the shooting is, and Ambassador Thomas Kelly (Michael Murphy), who controls the press pass Boyle needs. Death squads leave bodies on a hillside, and Boyle goes there to photograph them.
Oliver Stone’s account of a burnt-out reporter in El Salvador in 1980 is loud, angry and often clumsy, and James Woods is so alive in it that the clumsiness rarely matters. It plays loose with the record, and it still lands.
Oliver Stone made two war films in 1986, and this is the ragged one. Platoon made him respectable; Salvador, written with Rick Boyle, the reporter James Woods is playing, was made in a hurry and a temper. Boyle is a broke photojournalist who drives to El Salvador because there is a war on and wars pay. He takes an out-of-work disc jockey called Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi), mostly because Rock has a little cash. Stone wants us to see that American money is paying for the bodies on the hillside. He says so loudly and often, and the film is better than the speeches.
Woods is the reason to watch. His Boyle talks the way other people breathe, to get out of trouble and past checkpoints, and Woods plays him with a wet forehead and eyes that never stop counting the exits. He is a liar, a scrounger and a coward who keeps walking towards the shooting anyway, and Woods never asks us to like him for it. There is a scene in a church where Boyle tries to strike a bargain with God and cannot stop negotiating even on his knees; it is funny and pitiful at once.
Robert Richardson shoots it handheld in a hard white light that makes everyone look ill, and keeps the camera at Boyle’s shoulder, so we see the country as a man looking for a story, not a view. Bruno Rubeo’s San Salvador is shuttered shops, sandbags and pick-up trucks with armed men in the back. Claire Simpson cuts fast when the shooting starts and slows right down when it stops, so the aftermath lasts longer than the fight. Georges Delerue’s score is used sparingly, a mournful string theme over the worst of it, the one soft thing in the film.
The film’s centre is the hillside where the death squads leave their dead. Boyle and Cassady go there to work, stepping between bodies, and Stone does almost nothing with it: flat noon light, vultures on the ridge, two men with cameras looking for a face they know. We were horrified, and what horrified us was the routine of it, the way the two men treat it as a place they have been before. The scene needs no speech, and gets none.
Stone the writer is the trouble elsewhere. Boyle gets a speech to the embassy’s military men, Colonel Hyde (Will MacMillan) and Jack Morgan (Colby Chester), about what the United States is buying here, and it stops the film so the argument can be read out. Hyde and Morgan are cartoons in short sleeves, there to be shouted at. Michael Murphy’s Ambassador Kelly is the one American allowed doubt, a decent man who knows what he is signing and signs it anyway; Murphy gives him more than the script does.
The women fare worse. Elpidia Carrillo’s Maria, whom Boyle wants to marry and take north, is written as patience with a child on her hip, and Carrillo can do little but be gentle at him. Cynthia Gibb’s Cathy Moore, a church worker, is sweet and brief. Boyle’s redemption runs through both of them and neither is asked what she wants. Belushi’s Rock, by contrast, gets a whole film of panic and grumbling, and is good company. John Savage’s Cassady, who wants the one picture that matters, is the only man calmer than Boyle.
Some critics have taken the film apart for its history, and they have a point. Boyle is put at events the real Boyle did not witness, and several people in the film never existed. That matters more than in most thrillers, because the film’s whole force is that this happened, and the truth was terrible enough. But the bodies on the hillside were real, and the film makes you look at them, which few films of its decade did.
It runs 123 minutes and carries an 18. Watch it for Woods, the hillside and Richardson’s light, and expect a lecture around the hour mark. Stone would go on to make tidier films. This one is untidy and it is alive, and the second matters more.
Most critics like Salvador, and the praise gathers almost entirely around James Woods. His performance is called intense and animated, and even the more reserved notices treat it as the reason to watch. Oliver Stone’s direction is credited with confidence and a crackling energy, and the film’s picture of political violence is judged forceful, with several reviews finding it terrifying and, at moments, unexpectedly funny.
The reservations are about what surrounds that energy. One review faults a sentimental handling of redemption and of its women. The sharpest dissent comes from The Guardian, which grants that the film captures the horror of the war but argues it plays fast and loose with history, inventing characters and placing the journalist Richard Boyle at real events in a misleading way. Two of the six reviews cannot be read in full, so the true spread may be wider than the numbers show.
Ebert’s review is strongly positive about the film’s forceful depiction of political violence. He particularly praises James Woods’s intense performance.
Read the full review →Thomas finds the film gripping, describing it as hilarious and terrifying while praising Oliver Stone’s confident direction. He singles out James Woods’s animated performance as a particular strength.
Read the full review →Wilmington finds the film flawed but ultimately exciting, alive, and moving. He especially praises James Woods’s performance and the film’s crackling energy, while faulting its sentimental treatment of redemption and women.
Read the full review →The issue identifies Pauline Kael’s review of “Salvador,” but its verdict is not visible. No specific praise or complaint can be verified from the accessible page.
Read the full review →The review text is unavailable, so its verdict cannot be verified. No specific praise or complaint can be reliably identified from the accessible page.
Read the full review →The critic says the film captures the horror of El Salvador’s civil war but undermines its case with a fast-and-loose approach to history. They single out its invented characters and misleading placement of journalist Richard Boyle at major real events.
Read the full review →
Under Fire · not on Fi1m yetNick Nolte’s photographer in Nicaragua; the same trade, a cooler head, a steadier film.
MissingCosta-Gavras on Chile in 1973; Jack Lemmon learns what his embassy will not tell him.
The Year of Living Dangerously · not on Fi1m yetPeter Weir’s Jakarta in 1965; a correspondent, a coup, and Linda Hunt unforgettable.
Innocent Voices · not on Fi1m yetThe same war seen from a Salvadoran village, through the eyes of an eleven-year-old boy.
Nostalgia for the Light · not on Fi1m yetPatricio Guzmán’s documentary on Chile’s desert, its stars and the women still searching it for bones.
