User ratings:

Rate this

Time Out says

In 1980, Richard Boyle, an American journalist on the skids, drove down to Salvador, believing the place would provide both a story and all those things he remembered so fondly from the late 1960s - booze, drugs, sexual freedom. What he found was civil war, with his own government supporting the right wing incumbents and their death squads. Boyle, as portrayed by the excellent Woods, is naïve, manic, and dangerous. He suffers terror and humiliation, risks death, and re-discovers his professional integrity. Stone's film (co-written by Boyle with the director) is about North American ignorance, Central American tragedy, and how the two are related. The polemic may seem obvious and at times laboured, but the action sequences are brilliant, and the film does achieve a brutal, often very moving, power.


Add +

Release details

UK release:



122 mins

Users say


Average User Rating

3.8 / 5

Rating Breakdown

  • 5 star:0
  • 4 star:1
  • 3 star:0
  • 2 star:0
  • 1 star:0
1 person listening

this film as Cristina states hypersexualizes salvadoran females and reinforces stereotypes about the salvadoran community. This film as cristina states is one of the films that best portrays the violence that people endured during this time, but as she states it has a lot of flaws- culture wise, reinforces stereotypes, and fails to focus on the political struggles and focuses more on the reporter who believes that El Salvador is his way out of the personal issues he is dealing with because the salvadoran society has little respect for themselves which is not at all true. Females are portrayed poorly in this film and i would invite people to watch it, but be highly critical of it.