Amazon.com video review:
Director Oliver Stone (Platoon, JFK) offers up
this brilliant, engrossing true-life account of the violent civil war
in El Salvador as told through the perspective of a has-been
journalist trying for one last grasp at glory and finding the true
horror of war. James Woods is freelance journalist Richard Boyle, who
leaves San Francisco broke with his drug-addled, disc-jockey buddy
(Jim Belushi) to cover the escalating conflict and hopefully return to
his former stature as a war correspondent. What he finds is a nation
torn by random violence, shifting ideologies, poverty, and the
malevolent influence of the United States. Boyle tries to make sense
of the brutality he sees while extracting his girlfriend from the war
zone and saving his own life. Featuring John Savage (The Deer Hunter)
as an earnest photojournalist, this is a fascinating and riveting
depiction of the bloody strife that tore apart a nation and mirrored
the disillusionment of the Vietnam era. --Robert Lane
