MEN WITH GUNS (Sony Classics) Starring: Federico Jose Luppi, Damian Delgado, Dan Rivera Gonzalez, Damian Alcazar, Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody. Screenplay: John Sayles. Producers: R. Paul Miller and Maggiel Renzi. Director: John Sayles. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 125 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
If the term "independent film" means anything in an era when Disney owns Miramax, it means the work of John Sayles. Nothing Sayles has done through nearly twenty years of film-making has been done the easy way, or the predictable way. Just when it looked like he was "going studio" after EIGHT MEN OUT, he made the sprawling and ambitious CITY OF HOPE; the intimate adult drama PASSION FISH was followed by the lyrical family fantasy THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH. So it only stands to reason that Sayles would capitalize on the critically-acclaimed, Oscar-nominated LONE STAR by making his next film a tale of Latin American politics told almost entirely in Spanish.
MEN WITH GUNS is classic John Sayles, which is to say that it will reward most fully the viewer willing to think about it for a while afterwards. The principal protagonist is an elderly, recently widowed doctor named Humberto Fuentes (Federico Jose Luppi) who works and lives a comfortable life in the capital of an unnamed Latin American country. His mind turned to thoughts of his legacy with the passing of his wife, Fuentes decides to take his vacation in the interior jungles, planning to visit former medical students who had gone to work with the native Indian communities. What he discovers is a world far-removed from his own, where government troops and rebel guerrillas carry on a war which as claimed many of the doctors as casualties.
This discovery initially baffles Fuentes, who can't make sense of why doctors would be a threat to anyone. It is the mad "logic" of this kind of war which becomes one of Sayles main themes in MEN WITH GUNS. To the rebels, the educated doctors are threats because they have been trained with the financial assistance of the government; to the government, they are threats because they could actually get the Indians thinking about their plight. If the doctors aid wounded government soldiers, they are killed by the guerrillas; if they _don't_ assist the government soldiers, their lives are forfeit as well. The natives can't even tell the difference between the two battling factions. To them, they are all just "men with guns" who aribtrarily turn the world upside down because of the power they hold at their fingertips.
Fuentes' journey through the jungles becomes a road to realizing all that has been going on, all of the suffering he conveniently had never noticed. Sayles develops this notion of accepting responsibility for one's actions -- or lack of action -- as Fuentes picks up a number of passengers along his way. One is a former government soldier (Damian Alcazar) haunted by the violence to which he had been a party; another is a former priest (Damian Delgado) who loses his faith when he abandons his village to save his own life. He even takes a poke at Americans' blissful ignorance of the world in the characters of two adventurous tourists (Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody), while simultaneously suggesting the Americans know a bit more about Fuentes' country than the doctor himself. With his typical novelistic style, Sayles richly develops his characters into souls seeking redemption, doing their small part to be part of the solution where they had once been part of the problem.
Like many of Sayles' films, MEN WITH GUNS stumbles only because Sayles never met a two hour plus running time he didn't like. The side plots, including the inclusion of a streetwise youngster and a traumatized woman in Fuentes' traveling party, don't bear the same kind of fruit as the intertwined stories in LONE STAR. Often, they simply feel like padding in a singularly sedate war story. Still, Sayles working at less than the height of his powers is still a more provocative story-teller -- and an ever-more-mature visual film-maker -- than the vast majority of his contemporaries. He is willing to talk to his audiences rather than shout at them, to allow his films to sneak up on you with their thoughtful confidence. In 1998, that above all else makes John Sayles a truly independent film-maker.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 gun plays: 8.
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