A rather determinedly grim expose of the atrocities of the El Salvador civil war of the early Sixties, and the part played by America in the reinstatement of an allegedly oppressive regime. The body count piles up, mass open graves are graphically portrayed and the blood flows though the mouth and limb, but the film never really grips us in a narrative, despite the (perhaps over) committed performances of James Woods, John Savage and Michael Murphy, leaving James Belushi to linger longest in the mind as a hard-cursing American abroad floating bewildered on a sea of booze and blood. Unpleasant, depressing and angry, the film finally falls victim to its own viscera-thumping rhetoric in failing to convert us to its probably worthy cause. The end product is rather more of an ordeal than an entertainment. Wood's performance was Oscar-nominated.