What if Oliver Stone directed a movie about the El Salvador war (which some called “civil”) back in the '80s? What if it was a terrific movie that was lost in the blockbuster successes of some of his other films? What if, more than twenty years later, that same film can still both entertain and describe a time and a war that was important to Latin America and to the United States back 25 years — one that could happen around here again and can be compared to the Iraq conflict?
We went back to the 1986 film of the 1980s events. They were events in a small, Central American country that continue to reverberate in Iraq, let alone in the new Latin America of Hugo Chavez, the ghost of Fidel, and the threat of Obrador.
What if Salvador by Oliver Stone, with its near-star quality casting of James Woods (Richard Boyle) and James Belushi (Dr. Rock), needs to be re-discovered because the movie was so much better than it appeared to many then, and what if it should be paraded out in its digitally preserved incarnation as prophetic? A piece of fine entertainment that just might hint at future U.S. actions in the “little wars”. The ones that only kill little people.
We saw it for the first time just recently and were blown away by the fine performances of actors who are so often just making it toward stardom but seem caught on the periphery. James Woods is usually a heavy of sorts, a little slimy around the edges, perhaps a wheeler-dealer, a con-man, a soul on the verge of losing itself. He does it here with great precision and believable humor, deeply-felt responses to the world gone mad.
Roger Ebert, back in 1986, reviewed Salvador as being “a throwback” to a movie version of a “Hunter S. Thompson story "Where the Buffalo Roam," where hard-living journalists hit the road in a showdown between a scoop and an overdose.” He was right on in 1986. Now it is 2006 and this is history on an action scale and prophecy on a Hollywood scale.
In Salvador there is a James Woods who is cast so perfectly as a photo-journalist of the has-been variety who used up his favors and cannot find jobs to get out of his current messed-up life, left by a shrewish lady with only a soiled disposable diaper to remember her by. She is unimportant.
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