Perfectly adorable

Absolutely brilliant

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

An American photojournalist (James Woods) gets caught in a political struggle at El Salvador in 1980.Oliver Stone is an interesting director. He has managed to make a name for himself, but most people could probably not name his movies, or maybe name a small handful. Other than "JFK", people may not have even seen many. He is actually better known for his left-wing politics.In "Salvador", he definitely has the politics, expressing the view that one can be left-wing and still be anti-Communist and love America. This was a very timely film, and a subtle criticism of Ronald Reagan (though a couple years too late to really have any impact).

Excellent casting, performances and storytelling by Stone. The major difficulty in watching his re-telling of the true story is the looseness with which he interprets the events and uses the creative license to fill in with completely fictional elements. This isn't a bad thing but, as with all Stone movies, he gives them the illusion of 'reality' by interspersing these fictional elements with the same weight as the real elements. Adding the text post-scripts further enhances this dichotomy and blurs the lines between the actual true story and the "true" story he is telling. James Woods does a phenomenal job of portraying a peripheral real life journalist into a main story character as written by Stone and Boyle. This movie is very entertaining, makes you think and should encourage those who are unfamiliar with the events of this time period and area to actually read up on the scholarly accounts of these events.

Even though this is one of Oliver Stone's lesser known films I believe this is one of his best. It is arguably the "Casablanca" of the 1980s, a love story wrapped inside a political film.As Richard Boyle (James Woods) ventures to report on the US-backed military junta in the client state of El Salvador he tries to recapture his love with Maria (Elpidia Carrillo) and help her family with the peril that is going on in the country. His crusade for human rights is the most heroic I've seen in any film particularly when he says he believes in human rights not just for some but for everybody.And the horror of the junta and death squads is evident and potent from the burnt human skeleton to the pile of human corpses in the valley to the slaughter of the innocent nuns. Tony Plana's beginning speech as Major Max sends chills down ones' spine.The film was entirely believable with powerful performances on both sides on the conflict. You really feel like you are on the streets of San Salvador, the training fields of the FMLN, and the immigration department of the United States.Oh, and Stone--you have COURAGE with a capital "C" filming this during the actual El Salvadoran Civil War.

As a Salvadoran myself I have to say it is hard not to be hard with this movie. I get it. It's Hollywood and the actual facts are going to be embellished to attract the audience to a "one wild ride" but it feels so odd to see this in a movie made by a "conscious" Oliver Stone. The acting is bad and I can't believe how anyone will nominate the screenplay as a good one. Why must the character know everyone of the famous martyrs here? (and worst of all, knowing them in a very casual way) Was that the only way for people in the U.S. to feel disgusted by all the things going on here with their support? I don't like the cartoonish characters and the use of only Mexican locations and Mexican actors (as they also did in "Innocent voices").The worst part is to discover Jim Belushi in a movie with the Salvadoran civil war as backgroundThis movie hasn't aged well.