Salvador is the film where director Oliver Stone would discover his cinematic voice: a fiercely political outlook combined with rapid fire editing and cinematography. Before Salvador, Stone had directed two quasi-horror films. But Salvador signaled the true start of one of the most controversial and subversive careers in Hollywood history. Salvador follows a down-on-his-luck photojournalist and an unemployed radio jockey who travel to El Salvador in search of both employment and easy living. However, upon arriving in El Salvador, they discover that the Salvadoran civil war, a conflict which was widely being ignored at the time, was much deadly and disastrous than they could have imagined. They start a dogged campaign of trying to expose the crimes being committed to the rest of the world. Some of the events focused on include the assassination of Óscar Romero and the brutal raping and killing of Jean Donovan and three other Christian missionaries. Stone also accuses conservative forces in the United States, empowered by the election of Ronald Reagan, of having allowed and supported the atrocities committed against the revolutionaries. As would become his trademark, Stone observes one political interpretation of the events presented. And really, the film is more about the two young Americans' struggle for survival than the civil war itself. But Salvador is a mighty film that predicts the rise of one of the world's most dangerous filmmakers.
8/10
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