Trailer
Plot summary
Richard Boyle is a veteran photojournalist whose drinking and drug use have made him nearly unemployable. His wife has left him and taken their child, and he is out of money, so he talks his friend Doctor Rock, a disc jockey without work, into traveling with him to El Salvador, where he means to sell freelance coverage of the civil war. Entering the country, the two men see government troops execute a teenage high school student, and soldiers hold them until Boyle names an old connection, Colonel Figueroa. Boyle learns that the far-right ARENA party, with American backing, runs the country. He renews his acquaintance with the photojournalist John Cassady and the aid worker Cathy Moore and begins to document the abuses of the regime, among them mass graves and disappearances.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Salvador (1986)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's consultant, Salvadoran Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ricardo Cienfuegos, was assassinated on a tennis court by communist rebels in March 1985; Oliver Stone wrote in his production notes that the killing meant El Salvador was entering a period of hardline Marxist urban terrorism.
- The real-life Doctor Rock, Eric Isralow, sued Oliver Stone and Hemdale for breach of contract, claiming he was promised a role and that his DJ name "Dr. Rock" was used without permission; the case's outcome remains unknown.
- Oliver Stone found the story through the unpublished war reporting of his friend, journalist Richard Boyle, whom he saw as a kindred spirit, after his earlier films Seizure and The Hand failed commercially.
- Due to safety and security concerns, Salvador was actually filmed in Mexico rather than on location in El Salvador.
