In the same year that he made his most famous, for me and best film, “Platoon”, Oliver Stone released another film. Today, “Salvador” does not enjoy nearly the same status as the Vietnam war drama that brought him his first Oscar for directing, and it is interesting that for both films Stone was nominated for the Oscar and for the best original screenplay, but the award went to Woddy Allen for ” Hannah and her sisters”. The only nomination for the main role was given to James Woods for the role of experienced journalist and photographer Richard Boyle, who went to El Salvador, where the civil war was raging.
Like a good number of other films, Stone also designed “Salvador” based on real events and other people, but this adventure drama somehow remained in the shadow of a film with a similar theme from 1984. Of course, we are talking about “The Killing Fields” by Roland Joffe about the tragedy in Cambodia and the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge, and journalist Sydney Schanberg, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting from that Asian country. Just like Schanberg and Boyle, he is a real person, an American journalist who reported from all over the world and from all crisis areas since the sixties, and died in 2016 in the Philippines while reporting on the beginnings of the reign of President Rodrigo Duterte there.
Schanberg won a Pulitzer for Cambodia, and I’m the last reporter left there, the babbling, burnt-out Boyle whose life is a complete disaster keeps repeating. Due to a combination of bad character, arrogance and a love of alcohol and drugs, Boyle is broke and out of work for some time and virtually no media outlet wants to do business with him. He managed to ruin and destroy practically all the contacts and relationships he had, and one morning after realizing that his wife left him and took the child, Boyle will head to El Salvador with his equally drunk friend Doctor Rock (James Belushi).
He reported from there about fifteen years ago when the so-called soccer war between El Salvador and Honduras, he still has some contacts there and believes there might be work for him there. But when he arrives in El Salvador, Boyle will realize that the situation is significantly different than reported in America and that the civil war between the military junta and the rebels has only just begun. In many of his films, Stone was extremely critical of American foreign policy and its interventionism, causing chaos in all corners of the world and suppressing numerous attempts to awaken the people, especially in Latin America. Here, too, the USA and the CIA are secretly helping the military junta, which started with the massacre of the population, and in addition to trying to send the real picture from the field to the world, Boyle will also try to get his young lover and her two children out of the hell of El Salvador.
At the time when “Salvador” had its premiere, Greek-French filmmaker Costa Gavras was the most famous for films with a similar theme, and many critics compared Stone’s film with the works of an older author. However, as much as “Salvador” is a film about another ugly episode of American history and about helping a murderous military junta deal with its own population, it is a quality character study about a man who was completely burned out. And it’s probably Woods’ best role of his career, and he’s terrific as a chatty, resourceful reporter aware of the impending disaster. But even like that, completely resigned and disappointed, he still can’t fight the reporter’s gene and worms and is ready to risk his life to send the world a true picture of what is happening.