By Jason O'Brien jaobrien@charter.net
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Oliver Stone's first major film was Salvador, a very intriguing exploration into the war in El Salvador in the early 1980's. James Woods portrays Richard Boyle, a journalist who returns to El Salvador with his friend, played by James Belushi. Belushi thinks they are going a fun trip, but when they are stopped by men with rifles and taken away, the fun ends. The opening credit sequence to this film is a harbinger of the Stone style we would soon see - images flash across the screen very quickly.
The subplot of the film involves Boyle and the woman he meets in El Salvador and eventually falls in love with - his marriage back home is at its end as we see at the beginning of the film. He attempts to get her out of El Salvador and is even willing to marry her - in the end, just when we thought he had succeeded, the authorities take her away - we know she will go back to El Salvador where she will probably die, and Boyle is taken away by the police. Along with this story, though, the film is still very political, questioning the involvement of American troops in the civil war there. In one brilliant scene, Boyle argues for the ideals of America and its government as he talks to an American military officer - he believes in rights for all people. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, the ideals of American government are in sharp contrast to the reality of American government and the words go unheeded. Boyle is the first in a long line of Stone's characters who are very much the same - they believe strongly in America and they are very upset at the way it really is. Almost every Stone character has this political belief and each one fights against insurmountable odds to either find the truth or at least act as one voice which can hopefully lead to more, which is what Oliver Stone has become with his career and films - a voice against the establishment - he fights the media who attack him and stands for one thing - the truth and making sure it is brought to light. Richard Boyle was the first of Stone's characters to do this - eventually, characters like Chris Taylor, Bud Fox, Jim Garrison, and Ron Kovic all fight for what they believe in, and Stone brings their very controversial stories to the screen in the attempt to magnify that voice even more. Salvador still remains as the one Stone film I still have difficulty getting a handle on. After repeated viewings, I still have difficulty examining the film. On the one hand, it's a film that attempts to show a political story of the atrocities of war in El Salvador, which it does brilliantly. But the more I watch it it seems to be more of a film about Richard Boyle and the woman he falls in love with, and his attempt to get her out of the country safely. Richard Boyle is also the only Stone character I still do not understand - I don't know where his true motivations lie - it's a great performance by James Woods, and a film which tells a complicated and interesting story.
Additional Review and Discussion of Salvador by Lisa Diedrich
Boyle, the main character in Salvador, is a combination of innocent and anti-hero, and through him the story of Salvador is told. Boyle is not your
typical hero; he's sexist, rude, ignorant, and selfish. By Boyle's own admission he's a "weasal". But Boyle is indeed "innocent" in comparison with the violent characters who are destroying El Salvador with their viciousness and exploitation. What makes the film work so well is that this kind of character makes the perfect travelling companion for us as the audience to join in El Salvador to visit the horrors that are being perpetrated there. If our guide into this seedy, dark and violent world was a preachy, self-righteous prig we as the audience would probably want to take another trip altogether. Why not join a whoring, drinking, hilarious pair of losers (Boyle and Dr. Rock) instead? It certainly is more entertaining! Boyle, this drunken, foul-mouthed wild man has heart and when he begins to see the truth we feel the reality of his change.
Boyle is drawn to the violence and chaos he finds in El Salvador because it fits in so well with his own personality (something that I think reflects Stone's own "personal demons"). And yet Boyle can also manage to find truth despite his own personal faults or maybe because of them. Boyle is more likely to enter the danger zone because it's in his blood to live on the edge. He experiences the chaos in El Salvador at a very personal level, his girlfriend Maria's brother is killed and his friend photography John Cassady is shot and dies in Boyle's arms.
The Boyle we see at the end of the movie is very different from the carefree Boyle we met at the beginning. Boyle didn't seem to care for anyone at the
film's beginning, even when his wife and child leave him he seems to shrug it off with macho callousness. But by the film's end Boyle is desperate to
save Maria and her children from the fate that awaits them in El Salvador. The audience feels the anguish of their separation at the film's end, as the
beautiful end theme music sweeps in, it's a very emotional moment - as powerful for me as Chris's helicopter flight at the end of Platoon.
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The scene that really gets the film going is the very moving scene where Boyle along with another journalist who already was in El Salvador take pictures of a dump spot for victims of the war - bodies are strewn everywhere. Stone captures the realism of the journalists as they immerse themselves into direct combat - they witness and photograph the true horrors of war, especially in one scene where a woman goes down a line of prisoners, and one by one, shoots each one in the head. It's typical Stone stuff - shoving the brutality of war into our faces to great effect. 
Often Stone will use an "innocent" to be the focal point of his films. Bud Fox in Wall Street, Chris in Platoon and Garrison in JFK are all somehow
clean in the dirty worlds they inhabit and that makes them upstanding heroes that the audience is proud to champion. Stone also has the talent of
creating charismatic villains in his films. Shaw in JFK, Barnes in Platoon and Gekko in Wall Street are all fairly despicable creatures and yet the
audience finds these characters and their motivations to be fascinating. Gekko and Barnes in particular are "anti-heroes" of their respective films
and both manage to exert a strong influence of the protaganists and the audience. Stone himself referred to Barnes as being the mythological
Achilles figure of Platoon. And Gekko with his "greed is good" speech is the icon of the characters in the film Boiler Room.