Salvador

Variety by

The tale of American photojournalist Richard Boyle’s adventures in strife-torn Central America, Salvador is as raw, difficult, compelling, unreasonable, reckless and vivid as its protagonist.

CineVue by Christopher Machell

The editing, too, is rough around the edges, but it all adds to the sense of madness that pervades El Salvador – a sense that only grows the more intense the further that Boyle journeys into this Central American heart of darkness.

Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr

Stone works some imaginative changes on the usual formulas of propagandistic fiction—Boyle is anything but the usual bland audience-identification figure, waiting around to be converted to the ideological position of the filmmakers—but as a director, he still didn't have the chops to bring off such an ambitious, multilayered project: the picture lunges into hysterical incoherence every few minutes, and Stone must resort to platitudinous simplifications to clear things up. It's lively, though, to say the very least.

Chicago Tribune by Gene Siskel

Wexler told his story in credible human terms. Writer-director Stone felt the need to jazz up his action with wacked-out characters who belong in a ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Salvador is a movie about real events as seen through the eyes of characters who have set themselves adrift from reality. That's what makes it so interesting.

The New York Times by Walter Goodman

The main characters tend to be either grotesques or stereotypes, who keep getting into incoherent arguments, composed largely of variations on America's favorite epithet...For a movie with pretensions to laying out political realities, the colorful Salvador is black and white.

Empire by William Thomas

Stone takes gritty subject matter and hacks it into a perilous ride based on Boyle's life in Salvador. Showing the true, upsetting and harsh realities of which most of us try not to think of. Pure Oliver Stone.