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Blu-Ray : Recommended
Ranking:
Release Date: September 16th, 2014 Movie Release Year: 1986

Salvador

Overview -

A journalist, down on his luck in the US, drives to El Salvador to chronicle the events of the 1980 military dictatorship, including the assasination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. He forms an uneasy alliance with both guerillas in the countryside who want him to get pictures out to the US press, and the right-wing military, who want him to bring them photographs of the rebels. Meanwhile he has to find a way of protecting his Salvadorean girlfriend and getting her out of the country.

OVERALL:
Recommended
Rating Breakdown
STORY
VIDEO
AUDIO
SPECIAL FEATURES
Tech Specs & Release Details
Technical Specs:
BD-50 Dual-Layer Disc
Video Resolution/Codec:
1080p/AVC PEG-4
Length:
123
Aspect Ratio(s):
1.85:1
Audio Formats:
DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0
Subtitles/Captions:
English SDH
Special Features:
Theatrical Trailer
Release Date:
September 16th, 2014

Storyline: Our Reviewer's Take

Ranking:

By 1986, Oliver Stone had already won an Oscar (arguably undeserved) for writing the screenplay to Alan Parker's 'Midnight Express' and had scripted big movies like 'Scarface' for Brian De Palma and 'Year of the Dragon' for Michael Cimino. Nevertheless, Oliver Stone was not yet the Oliver Stone, the equally celebrated and reviled filmmaker whose movies (if not his very existence as a human being) would go on to polarize audiences and political pundits for decades. Although rarely brought up as one of his signature efforts, 'Salvador' was Oliver Stone's first movie in the sense of being an Oliver Stone Film, and was a huge turning point in his career.

Previously, Stone had directed two feature films, both schlocky low-budget horror flicks, one of which he disowned. Looking back, both seem like little more than proof-of-concept exercises to demonstrate that he was capable of putting a movie together. In comparison, 'Salvador' leaps forward as a fully-formed expression of Stone's voice as a filmmaker. It's a politically charged story based on real events, told in raw, uncensored and unrestrained fashion and filled with fiery indignation. For a movie made on a shoestring budget, it's also a rather bravura piece of directing that feels much larger than the actual production could have possibly been.

Set in 1980, James Woods stars as burned-out photojournalist Richard Boyle, a fast-talking sleazeball whose career and family life have both imploded, leaving him broke and briefly homeless. The type of guy who's always playing an angle somewhere, Boyle cons his only friend, a dipshit former radio DJ called Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi) into handing over his own last remaining dollars and joining Boyle on a road trip to Central America, where Boyle hopes to pick up stringer work covering the bloody civil war then raging in El Salvador. He actually stands a decent chance of that, given that the country is a war-torn hellscape of untold dangers that the American public is almost totally oblivious to and apathetic toward. Only a lunatic thrill-seeker would actually want to go there of his own volition, while all the respectable American journalists stay home to cover the Reagan/Carter Presidential election. Somebody's got to try to document the story, and who else is gonna do it?

Taking a page out of Hunter Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', the Gonzo journalist and his druggie enabler friend initially tear through the country, drinking and whoring through the chaos around them, and generally behaving like massive unrepentant assholes. Boyle makes every effort to ingratiate himself with both corrupt military officials and guerilla rebels who can get him access to good photo opportunities in exchange for favorable coverage. Eventually, however, the abject horror of the place – with its death squads and mass graves and sudden assassinations and violent combat in the streets – gets to him. If it doesn't quite sober him up, the gravity of the situation at least makes him angry – angry that the American government has not just failed to intervene but has actually inflamed the conflict out of a bullshit fear of Communist incursion, and angry that the public back home just plain doesn't give a shit about the genocide happening below its borders.

Yes, 'Salvador' is a message movie, and subtlety is not a trait that Oliver Stone would ever be known for. The story can get a little preachy and heavy-handed, but the film is an impassioned, harrowing work of moral outrage. The characters are complex and flawed, and Stone isn't afraid to sometimes make them downright unlikable. As much as he seems to enjoy rubbing audiences' noses in the dirt and sweat and danger of the setting, the verisimilitude he conjures is often astounding. How he staged some of these scenes for little to no money is a feat of directorial magic that filmmakers far more experience could never pull off.

James Woods is deliciously smarmy and dickish, and ultimately sympathetic, as Boyle. By virtue of his talent, he makes the fictionalized character more charmingly assholish than the real Richard Boyle seems to have been. Meanwhile, Jim Belushi, an actor who would later be known for his lazy insufferability, actually tries to deliver a legitimate performance here (one often uncomfortably based on his real brother's spiral into druggie oblivion). It's quite an achievement that he's not only tolerable in the movie, but perhaps even good.

'Salvador' was produced by the Helmdale Film Corporation, a small studio that wasn't able to give it sufficient distribution or promotion at the time. The film was released in early 1986 and, despite some very positive reviews from critics, disappeared quickly and lost money. Almost immediately as soon as production wrapped, Oliver Stone jumped right into 'Platoon', the movie that would be regarded as his first masterpiece. The wild success and acclaim of that picture overshadowed and essentially swallowed 'Salvador' whole. Nonetheless, even as 'Platoon' walked away with a host of Oscars the following year, 'Salvador' was surprisingly also recognized with nominations for James Woods as Best Actor (he lost to Paul Newman) and Oliver Stone for Best Original Screenplay (competing against himself, and lost both to Woody Allen).

Oliver Stone would go on to both great successes and dire lows. Today, 'Salvador' is rarely even brought into the conversation when discussing the man behind 'Platoon', 'Born on the Fourth of July' or 'JFK', but it should be. It's a vital work in the development of an important artist, and remains a genuinely good film about a subject that still deserves more attention.



The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Salvador' comes to Blu-ray from Twilight Time, under license from MGM Home Entertainment. The disc is a limited edition with a pressing run of only 3,000 copies. Like most Twilight Time releases, the Blu-ray has a boring static menu.

Video Review

Ranking:

Once you get past the opening credits montage, which is sourced from low-res archival news footage, early scenes in the movie are almost startlingly crisp and detailed. Even Oliver Stone mentions being surprised by this in the audio commentary, and I'm pretty sure he was watching the old DVD edition back when that was recorded. The first shot of James Woods in his apartment is really striking, and later scenes where he drives through San Francisco feel like stepping back in time to the city in the early 1980s.

As the action progresses to Central America, the filmmaking becomes noticeably rougher, grittier and grainier. That's both a factor of practical necessity (most of the movie was shot in seat-of-their-pants guerilla fashion) and is thematically appropriate for the story. The Blu-ray's 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer is a very straightforward scan of quality film elements without any digital mucking around. Film grain is preserved and handled appropriately. Colors look good. If night scenes look a little washed out or excessively grainy, that's most likely an inherent trait of the original photography. Even if the rest of the movie isn't nearly as vibrant as the opening, it's always satisfyingly detailed.

The lack of digital processing also means a lack of clean-up work. Minor specks and dirt appear routinely, and the end credits have a scratch down the side of the screen. Fortunately, issues like this are generally minor and forgivable.

The image is presented in its theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio with tiny letterbox bars at the top and bottom.



Audio Review

Ranking:

The Blu-ray offers the movie's soundtrack in two options: the original mono or a 5.1 remix. Both are encoded in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio format. While purists may embrace the mono version, that track sounds very weak and constrained. I found the 5.1 mix to be stronger and livelier. The music (possibly remastered from the original stereo recordings) has nice breadth and presence.

Attempts to expand the soundstage to the surround channels are applied only sparingly and tastefully. A helicopter pan is nicely done. Gunshots are crisp and occasionally reverberate through the room. While 'Salvador' will never be mistaken for a big-budget action flick, the movie's climax, with lots of rumbling tanks and booming explosions, is pretty effective.

On the other hand, the dialogue channel is often weak and sometimes scratchy. Aside from the climax, the soundtrack's dynamic range isn't particularly impressive.

Ultimately, 'Salvador' is a low-budget movie in which the director made the best of his limited resources. It sounds about as good as it probably ever could.



Special Features

Ranking:

Twilight Time's Blu-ray carries over most of the bonus features from MGM's DVD edition that was originally released in 2001.

  • Audio Commentary – Oliver Stone has recorded a number of very good commentary tracks in his day, but his best commentaries typically allow him to interact with other participants. He goes solo in this one, and apparently had not seen 'Salvador' in a long time before recording. He frequently pauses just to watch the movie. When he does speak, he has intelligent and interesting things to say, but the long gaps between comments are very frustrating.
  • Into the Valley of Death: The Making of Salvador (SD, 63 min.) – It's a shame that this retrospective documentary is encoded in a very low-resolution, 4:3 letterbox format that looks really terrible and artifacty while shrunken down to a tiny rectangle floating in the middle of an HDTV screen. It's a fascinating piece that discusses the real Richard Boyle and the true story of the Salvadoran revolution, in comparison to Oliver Stone's fictional depiction of it. If anything, the real events were even more horrifying than what Stone could show. Mixed with this are plenty of production stories about the shoot. Stone admits that he blatantly and repeatedly lied to his producers to get the movie financed and conned the Mexican government into loaning him real military equipment and soldiers.
  • Deleted Scenes (SD, 28 min.) – Nearly half an hour of deleted or extended scenes expand the political content of the film. A lot of footage of Jim Belushi also wound up on the cutting room floor. Stone bemoans being forced to cut an orgy sequence to get an R rating, but the scene arguably goes too far. Another scene involving dead children is incredibly disturbing. As with the documentary, all of this footage is authored in very crummy, low-res form.
  • Theatrical Trailer (SD, 2 min.) – The misleading trailer tries to sell 'Salvador' as an exciting action movie.




HD Bonus Content: Any Exclusive Goodies in There?

New to the Blu-ray are the following:

  • Isolated Score – The movie's musical score is isolated in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo format. It sounds good during the few occasions when music is used, but the movie doesn't have much music in it at all, so the track is mostly silent.
  • Booklet Essay – The booklet inside the Blu-ray case contains an essay by Twilight Time employee Julie Kirgo praising the film as Oliver Stone's breakthrough work.

The Cutting Room Floor: What Didn't Make the Blu-ray?

The old DVD edition had a photo gallery that didn't get ported to Blu-ray. It's not much of a loss.

Even though 'Salvador' is frequently forgotten when talking about the great films in Oliver Stone's career, the movie was a hugely important milestone in the director's development as an artist and still holds up as a powerful piece of work today. The Blu-ray from Twilight Time has good video and audio, and a few interesting supplements. Recommended.