“Is that why you’re here, Colonel? Some kind of post-Vietnam experience like you need a rerun or something? You pour a hundred twenty million bucks into this place, you turn it into a military zone, so what, so you can have chopper parades in the sky?”
Why it’s a left-wing film
Although he had directed the middling horror film “The Hand” in 1981 and a couple of short films, “Salvador” was Oliver Stone’s first Oliver Stone Film, a political-themed drama based on a true story and yet still skewed in unmentionable ways to condemn what would become the two-time Oscar-winning director’s usual targets: America, Reagan, the military, the CIA, and conservatives in general.
The film’s narrative covers the tumultuous 1980-81 Civil War period in El Salvador with a story that starts just prior to Ronald Reagan taking office in January of ’81, but through a lot of exposition (masterfully delivered by star James Woods) Stone still manages to blame much of the country’s chaos on Reagan, the “right wing” and, of course, the CIA for supposedly supporting and training and enabling the military death squads that roamed the country murdering supporters of the leftist uprising.
Stone also uses a sleight of hand to make you think it was Reagan who was in office and who continued military and financial assistance after the brutal assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero (during a Catholic mass and just after a blistering anti-government speech) and the horrific rape and murder of four Catholic nuns. Both of these tragedies occurred in late 1980 while Carter was still in office, but Stone seems incapable of dealing with the fact that running the American government and continuing all that aid — though it was briefly suspended after the bodies of the nuns were found — in the face of the worst kind of human rights abuses was a Democrat president and Congress.
When Reagan did take office, he merely took over a policy his liberal predecessor had long supported.
As expected, Stone’s look at El Salvador is also childishly simplistic. On one side, an American-backed right-wing government that denies civil rights, murders the innocent, and holds on to power through dishonest elections and terror. On the other side, the noble peasantry rising up only for their rights, some of them outright Communists. To Stone’s credit he does include a scene with Communists indiscriminately shooting prisoners, but he also has Woods scream, “You’re just like them! You’re just like them!”
America’s reasons for being involved in El Salvador were completely valid. Having another communist country and the Cuba/Soviet influence that came with it in Central America was fraught with peril when it came to our own national security and it takes a special kind of fool to believe the leftist uprising would result in any kind of Worker’s Paradise for the people of El Salvador, most especially for the well-intentioned but naive Catholic clergy who tended to side with the rebels.
Well, God love him, but I think we all know that Stone is one of those special kinds of fools and one sly enough to put the political arguments he disagrees with in the mouth of an unlikable, over-bearing, macho, but not very bright military officer. This allows Woods to swat down the other side’s case with ease and leave the viewer with the impression that America was indifferent to the suffering of the people of El Salvador, we didn’t really believe there was any kind of legitimate Communist threat there and that we knowingly used that ruse as an excuse to strut our stuff throughout Central America, fill the pockets of military contractors and shake off the ghost of Vietnam.
Why it’s a great film
Four words: The Mighty James Woods.
Though The Mighty Paul Newman won a long overdue Oscar for “The Color of Money” and everyone was rooting for him to win, we all knew that Woods (who was nominated) had turned in the best performance of 1986, and arguably one of the best of the decade.
If you’ve seen Woods’ unforgettable portrayal of Lester Diamond in Martin Scorsese’s last decent film, the 1995 masterpiece “Casino,” you’ve only seen half of what he accomplishes as Rick Boyle in “Salvador.” Lester Diamond has all the same livewire qualities of needy, desperate sleaze that Boyle does, but whereas Lester is utterly soulless and unsympathetic, using that indescribable thing only the greatest of actors possess, Woods instantly and wordlessly gives Boyle a humanity you somehow sense; and though he’s introduced to us as a selfish liar and manipulator only interested in a quick buck, a cheap high, and even cheaper whores, you still find yourself instantly rooting for him.
Prior to “Salvador” Woods had shown what he could do in 1979’s terribly under-appreciated “Onion Field,” but nobody noticed. In 1984 he anchored a major role in one of the greatest films ever made, director Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” but the studio so thoroughly fucked that film three ways from Sunday (sorry, there’s no other way to describe it), that again no one noticed. Finally, with the sordidly charming, always on the hustle Rick Boyle, Woods hung his star and though the film itself was a box office flop, we all saw and fell in love with both James Woods and “Salvador” on home video and HBO.
The other important reason the film works so well is that Stone is an extraordinarily gifted director (though his last few efforts have been embarrassments) who wisely chose to make “Salvador” primarily a character study and story of personal redemption. Like Bogart’s character in “Casablanca,” Stone introduces us to a thoroughly selfish and self-involved cynic who finally finds his soul through the realization that something is happening in the world more important than himself. Though we disagree with the political fantasyland Stone creates, the world and situations in which Boyle finds his redemption are secondary to our desire to see that redemption.
Stone co-wrote the film with the real Rick Boyle (both were nominated) and the first act is nothing short of brilliant in introducing us to this character and all his flaws as he cons his unemployed DJ pal Doctor Rock (a never better James Belushi) into a Hunter S. Thompson-like odyssey filled with drugs, sex and reportage. But once Boyle arrives in El Salvador (unable to afford a plane ticket, he hilariously has to drive there from California) and sees what’s really happening (according to Oliver Stone), he changes, grows, gets involved, risks his life for others and wants to become a better man and Catholic — going so far as to offer to marry a local woman with two kids in order to get her out of the country.
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Of course Boyle’s already married and undoubtedly the worst Catholic within a few hundred square miles of wherever he stands. But the pleasure of watching his selfish qualities diminish and his humanity take over is quite rewarding and because he never becomes perfect — he’ll always be a scoundrel — the transformation feels very real.
If none of the above convinces you to check out “Salvador,” I promise you that watching Boyle give his first confession to a priest in 30 years is well worth your time. The scene is poignant, utterly faithful to the character, and on-the floor-funny.
Great actor. Great character. Great director.
What’s not on the list
“Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Crash” (2004)
Writer/director Paul Haggis’ “Crash” doesn’t qualify because it’s a piece of cinematic shit — a sanctimonious, superior, strident, melodramatic, over-wriiten, over-acted, smug piece of cinematic shit that looks down on the “little people” of Los Angeles from the morally illiterate, self-righteous tower of the Hollywood Hills and declares us all racists. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for almost eight years now and the least of this Godforsaken city’s problems are its overwhelmingly decent and tolerant people. When it comes to different cultures living harmoniously together, L.A. is one of the great success stories of history. I’m a white guy married to a Spanish-speaking woman who was born in Mexico living in an overwhelmingly Asian neighborhood just a few block from the mostly Hispanic (and unfairly infamous — thanks Hollywood!) East Los Angeles (where we shop, eat, see movies…) – and I have never ever ever ever once seen or been involved in any kind of racial incident, much less the one’s depicted as an everyday reality in that godawful film
The only bigot here is Paul Haggis and those who rewarded his deep-seated prejudice against anyone not like his superior self with glowing reviews and Academy Awards (Best Picture!). In the worst way possible, he ruthlessly defamed the good people of this city, an overwhelming majority of whom look out for one another and see only fellow Americans in what is a richly diverse and endlessly interesting melting pot. The everday people in America moved past race a long time ago. The only ones who refuse to move on are like the leftists in Hollywood who remain obsessed with skin color and keeping those divisions wide and raw for political gain.
Adding insult to injury is that “Crash” stole that year’s Best Picture Oscar from the film that truly deserved it, director Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain,” a production that certainly had an agenda but not a political one. This poignant and heartbreaking story of two men who fall in love and can’t be together isn’t about gay marriage or any other partisan issue. Instead, Lee presents us with two very real and sympathetic characters, demands we recognize them as human beings, and wisely leaves it at that.
Because watching any kind of physical intimacy between two men makes me extremely uncomfortable (you call it homophobia, I call it wiring), I’ve only seen “Brokeback” once but the final scene’s stayed with me ever since. Heath Ledger’s character alone in that house trailer with nothing but that shirt worn by Jake Gyllenhaal’s character to remember him by is emotionally devastating stuff.
There’s nothing right or left about “Brokeback Mountain,” and I personally found it refreshing to see the rare Hollywood portrayal of homosexuals as something other than the easy stereotype of flamboyant Judy Garland fanatics.