Salvador (film)

Salvador is a 1986 film about an American journalist covering the Salvadoran Civil War who becomes entangled with both leftist guerrillas and the right wing military. The film is sympathetic towards the left wing revolutionaries and strongly critical of the U.S.-supported death squads, focusing on their murder of four American churchwomen, including Jean Donovan, and their assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero.
 * Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Oliver Stone and Richard Boyle.

Richard Boyle

 * [to his captors] I hope you all get anal herpes!


 * Left-wing, Colonel? Eh, maybe. But I'm not a Communist. And you guys never seem to be able to tell the difference!


 * Is that why you're here, Colonel? Some kind of post-Vietnam experience like you need a rerun or something? You pour a hundred twenty million bucks into this place, you turn it into a military zone, so what, so you can have chopper parades in the sky?


 * You let them close down the universities, you let them wipe out the best minds in the countries, you let them kill whoever they want, you let them wipe out the Catholic Church, you let them do it all because they aren't Commies! And that, Colonel, is bull shit!

John Cassady

 * You gotta get close to get the truth. You get too close, you die.

Ambassador Thomas Kelly

 * [about the government in El Salvador] A pathological killer on the right, God-knows-what on the left, and a gutless middle.

Dialogue

 * John Cassady: I thought you were dead.
 * Richard Boyle: Dead? Why, do I look that bad?
 * John Cassady: Yes.


 * John Cassady: You know what made photographers like Robert Cappa great, Rich? They weren't after money, they captured the nobility of human suffering!
 * Richard Boyle: That was a great shot in Spain. The one flying through the air.
 * John Cassady: Yeah but it was more than just bodies, Rich. He got... why they died.


 * Doctor Rock: They kill people here, Boyle!
 * Richard Boyle: Do you believe everything you read in the papers?
 * Doctor Rock: Yeah I do!
 * Richard Boyle: Come on man, you're gonna love it here.


 * Jack Morgan: You know I'm often asked by people like yourself to examine my conscience and every now and then I do examine it.
 * Richard Boyle: And what do you find there, Jack?
 * Jack Morgan: That whatever mistakes we make down here, the alternative would be ten times worse!


 * Richard Boyle: [furious at the sight of how rebels treat their prisoners] Is this your sense of justice?!
 * Rebel Woman: [In Spanish] It's necessary!
 * Richard Boyle: [pulled away by two rebels] You've become just like them! You've become just like them!
 * Rebel Youth: This is war! You don't have the stomach for it! Get out!
 * Richard Boyle: [Turns around one last time] YOU'VE BECOME JUST LIKE THEM!

Cast

 * James Woods - Richard Boyle
 * Jim Belushi - Doctor Rock
 * Michael Murphy - Ambassador Thomas Kelly
 * John Savage - John Cassady
 * Elpidia Carrillo - María
 * Cindy Gibb - Cathy Moore
 * Tony Plana - Major Maximiliano 'Max' Casanova
 * Colby Chester - Jack Morgan- State Department Analyst
 * Will MacMillan - Colonel Bentley Hyde Sr.