This fine, raw film is reminiscent of Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously and would have been made decades earlier with more razzmatazz, plus Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Myrna Loy. Here it's Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy as the three roving war correspondents found at the start in process of moving from Chad to Nicaragua in 1979. In the Central American melting-pot, the three newshounds - Nolte is a photo-journalist, the others news reporters - become all too personally involved as the revolution boils over into fighting in the streets. Few of the horrors of such a situation are spared us, but at the same time there is more personality-building than in the Weir film. Besides the leading trio, all giving solid portrayals, Jean-Louis Trintignant as a mysterious French 'spy', Ed Harris as a grinning mercenary killer and Alma Martinez as a guerilla all make their marks. Some rather trite points about exchanging one set of tyrants for another - so that the film can wave its white flag of impartiality - cannot obscure the tension dripping from every frame of such reconstructed immediacy. Jerry Goldsmith's haunting panpipe-type music is one of his very best scores. QUOTE: 'You're gonna love this war. Good guys, bad guys and cheap shrimp! '

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