Director Oliver Stone ("Platoon", "JFK") offers up this brilliant, engrossing true-life account of the violent civil war in El Salvador as told through the perspective of a has-been journalist trying for one last grasp at glory and finding the true horror of war. James Woods is freelance journalist Richard Boyle, who leaves San Francisco broke with his drug-addled, disc-jockey buddy (Jim Belushi) to cover the escalating conflict and hopefully return to his former stature as a war correspondent. What he finds is a nation torn by random violence, shifting ideologies, poverty, and the malevolent influence of the United States. Boyle tries to make sense of the brutality he sees while extracting his girlfriend from the war zone and saving his own life. Featuring John Savage ("The Deer Hunter") as an earnest photojournalist, this is a fascinating and riveting depiction of the bloody strife that tore apart a nation and mirrored the disillusionment of the Vietnam era. "--Robert Lane"