Film / Salvador

Salvador is a 1986 American war drama film directed and co-written by Oliver Stone, starring James Woods, Jim Belushi, Michael Murphy, and John Savage.

The film follows Richard Boyle (Woods), an American photojournalist who is covering The Salvadoran Civil War and becomes entangled with both the FMLN and the right-wing military while trying to rescue his girlfriend and her children.

Notable for its realistic depiction of events and for being critical of the US-supported military, the film earned generally positive reviews, garnering Academy Award nominations for Best Actor (Woods) and Best Original Screenplay (Stone).

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This film provides examples of:

• Anyone Can Die: Unsurprisingly, as the real events took lives of the enormous amount of innocent people. The noticeable characters that die over the course of the film include Maria’s younger brother, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Boyle’s friend Cathy Moore and her fellow nuns and another one of Boyle’s friends and fellow photojournalist, John Cassady.
• Artistic License – Geography: San Salvador is seemingly depicted as being on the coastline (with Boyle and Dr. Rock visiting Maria and her children at their house near the beach), but in actuality is located inland.
• Artistic License – History: For the standards of its director, the reconstruction of the first phases of The Salvadoran Civil War is remarkably accurate and the film has been even praised by the US Ambassador in the country at the time for having captured well the chaotic situation. However, it still takes some liberties. In particular, its depiction of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero is quite inaccurate:
  • For starters, Richard Boyle did not witness it.
  • Then, even if it is true that Romero was murdered while giving the homily during mass, it did not happen in San Salvador’s main Cathedral, but in the small chapel of a hospital managed by the Catholic Church.
  • The speech that Romero gives in the film is not based upon his last homily, but a sermon that he read at the national radio the day before his murder.
  • Finally, Romero, a high prelate of the pacifist Catholic Church, never condoned the use of insurrectional violence by the revolutionaries.
• Asshole Victim: No one would shed a tear over Maximiliano Casanova's right-hand man, considering the unbelievable cruelty he showed during the film.
• Big "NO!": Boyle shouts it as John is lethally wounded.
• Boom, Headshot!: Cathy is murdered this way.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Major Maximiliano Casanova and his henchmen’s face and deeds scream evil.
• Colonel Kilgore: Major Maximiliano Casanova and the army lieutenant that serves as his right-hand man seem to gleefully enjoy the war and violence that is ripping the country apart.
• Death from Above: John Cassady is killed by a plane.
• Downer Ending: At the end of the film, many of the characters have died, including Cathy and John, Cassidy is arrested by US Immigration Authorities, Maria and her children are deported and the war in Salvador is going on.
• Expy: The ARANA party is an evilier, fascist version of the Real-Life ARENA (Republican Nationalist Alliance of El Salvador) party.
• Face Death with Dignity: Cathy just calmly crosses herself before getting shot.
• Foreshadowing:
  • John’s death is actually foreshadowed several times in dialogues between him and Boyle.
  • When they meet Colonel Julio Figueroa for the first time Doyle introduces him to Dr. Rock as "El Salvador's Patton". Guess who will lead the counteroffensive against the rebels later on.
• Hate Sink: Major Maximiliano Casanova, the ARENA party and the Salvadorian military.
• The Heavy: Even if he acts only on Major Max's orders, the main antagonist that the protagonists must face is the unnamed lieutenant played by the Dominican actor Juan Fernandez.
• Historical Domain Character: Archbishop Óscar Romero, alongside María and her children, Doctor Rock, and Richard Boyle themselves (though their personal stories, especially that of María, are partly fictionalized). Other characters have indirect analogues (see No Celebrities Were Harmed listing below).
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The ARENA party-expy and its founder are portrayed as fascist fanboys of dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (also known as the man who decimated the indigenous population of the country during La Matanza of 1932) obsessed with creating a totalitarian El Salvador. While they were directly responsible for many disappearances and assassinations before winning the 1988 elections in real life, they were your typical self-serving right-wing authoritarians funded by the United States.
  • That being said, Roberto D'Aubuisson (the real-life analogue for this film's "Major Max") did express open admiration for Adolf Hitler and his Holocaust policies out of belief in a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy, and there was a paramilitary death squad operating in El Salvador named the "Maximiliano Hernández Martínez Anti-Communist Brigade" at the time.
• Hope Spot: Two harrowing examples towards the end of the film:
  • Two thirds into the movie the rebels unleash their long-awaited offensive, overrun the strategic town of Santa Ana and seem poised to march on the capital and overthrow the right-wing military junta. Cue the US Ambassador ordering American military supplies to the Salvadoran Army to resume and news arriving in Santa Ana that Colonel Figueroa’s armoured division has broken through the rebels’ defences.
  • At the end Boyle, Maria and her children are able to leave El Salvador, reach the Mexico-USA border and are waved through after a perfunctory search and questioning. Then the bus they are traveling on is stopped at a US Immigration interior checkpoint and Maria and her children are arrested to be deported.
• Hypocrite: The film’s main goal is to show the inherent hypocrisy of war.
  • First, there is corrupt government of Salvador that says that they’re defending locals from terrorists, while they are in fact not giving a single damn about innocent people, ordering the deaths of anyone who disagrees with them (unless they got immunity).
  • Second, there are the American staff at the US Embassy who maintain that they are just helping the Salvadorian government to defend their country against foreign Communist subversions, while in fact they’re taking a much bigger part in the war than they say and are well aware that the insurgency is mainly a domestic reaction to the local government’s corruption and violence.
  • Third, the communist revolutionaries who are initially depicted sympathetically as freedom fighters against a blood-thirsty proto-fascistic government, but start executing prisoners during the final battle as soon as notice comes that government’s reinforcements are coming.
  • Minor case with the policemen who arrest Boyle during the ending, who almost execute him, but spare him and treat him kindly and friendly as soon as the outgoing US Ambassador intervenes in his favour.
• Jerkass: The members of the US Embassy and the American right-wing journalist who insult Boyle and justify American involvement in the civil war.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Richard Boyle is a rude, cheating person with a very unhealthy lifestyle, but he also cares for the lives of other and is ready to risk his own life for others.
  • Doctor Rock can be a drug-addicted jerkass, but he’s also a good and loyal friend who’s ready to help his close ones.
• Nice Girl: Cathy is an incredibly supportive and kind person, which makes her death even sadder.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: John Hoagland ("John Cassady"); Roberto D'Aubuisson ("Major Maximilian 'Max' Casanova"); Ambassador Robert White ("Ambassador Thomas Kelly"); and Sisters Jean Donovan, Dorothy Kazel, Maura Clark, and Ita Ford ("Cathy Moore" and the other ill-fated missionary nuns), are all depicted indirectly under different names. Surprisingly averted with some real-life characters who are directly depicted by name (see Historical Domain Character listing above).
• Punch-Clock Villain: The members of the Salvadorian National Guard guarding the border post that Boyle, Maria and her children try to go through at the ending are a ‘’’very’’’ disturbing example. When they discover that Boyle is a critic of the government, they torture him and are ready to castrate and murder him. When they receive a counterorder from the capital (thanks to the US ambassador’s intervention), they are more than happy to share a beer with him, laughing out loud all the time.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Thomas Kelly, the US Ambassador in El Salvador, is a good man who is doing his best to rein in the violence that is tearing the country apart.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • John tries to get a perfect shot of a war plane, and gets killed in front of Boyle, who then takes his photos as John asked before dying.
  • Boyle and Maria try to escape from Salvador with fake documents and by saying they’re married couple. The Salvadorian custom officers easily find out that the documents are fake and this almost gets Boyle summarily executed. After that he is saved in the nick of time thanks to a timely phone call to the US Embassy by Dr. Rock, Maria and her children get deported soon after having entered the USA.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Maria’s younger brother.
• Take That!: Boyle claims he was actually the last man out of Cambodia, and not Sydney Schanberg. Whether the film is just slamming Schanberg or also slamming The Killing Fields is left unclear.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Cathy is the nicest character in the film and her horrific demise of being raped and executed is one of the most terrifying scenes in the movie.
• War Is Hell: Innocent people dying, children fighting and getting executed, women being raped, prisoners being killed after surrendering... War is sure hell.
• Would Hurt a Child: Many children are killed in the film, including Maria’s brother who got executed by the government forces for petty reasons.