Your governm ent
loves you, and
wishes you well
by Eleemor Malin
A d ru n k wakes up one afternoon to news
on the tube that there is trouble going on in El
Salvador. He goes to a pay phone and begs
fo r a press pass and passage to the fracas. He
is a debauched and failed m em ber o f that
battered branch o f the th ird estate — the
param ilitary paparazzi.
• CINEMA
Jam es W oods plays real-life stringer, Richard
Boyle (w ho co-authored the script) in the film
Shrunken, long down on his luck,
Boyle operates, nevertheless by means o f
experience. C onfrontational by nature, he
asks everyone fo r favors, money. He doesn’t
get m uch, but he gets along. In one tig h t spot,
his life is spared, and that o f his friend, Doc
(Jim Belushi, fo r com edy relief), because he
once w rote a good story about an unpopular
m ilita ry man. B ut Boyle can’t get m uch from
the people he asks because they hold him in
such low esteem. The inference is that he has
been trivialized by the political hierarchy (o f
both sides), and the rest o f the m em bers o f
the in form atio n m edia because he dares to
speak the truth. El Salvador in the raw is not
the sort o f reality we Am ericans want to deal
with.
W oods is so com pelling in his role as the
sleazy stringer, you feel as if you are with him
in his trials. The cum ulative effect o f the ac­
tio n shots and situations o f terror and hysteri­
cal abandon absolutely w ill grip you. The
characters are in a country where hum an
rights co u n t fo r nothing. The fate o f the in d i­
vidual m ig h t well rest on the least significant
detail — the w him o f any dogface soldier or
drunken partisan.
Boyle watches the other reporters having
to swallow gigantic untruths to m aintain their
access to governm ent types, and we sense
he feels a m oral superiority. S till, he acts like a
jerk, and looks m alnourished, as though he
m ust be struggling very hard to keep him self
fro m being dissolved in a barrel o f Tick-Tack
cheap booze). You feel sorry for this
m an; he’s not a bad guy, really, ju st a hyper
sleazeball in an im possible situation.
Because o f his outspoken past work Boyle
is
with CIS personnel, and
can’t even get a
fo r his g irl friend. She
could be killed if she gets in the way o f a
random sweep, ju st fo r not having the docu­
m e n t She could get one if she could get back
to her hom etow n, but w ithout i t she would
m ost likely be killed on a trip hom e. So Boyle
schem es to m arry her, although he is already
Salvador.
(real
persona non grata
cedula
fORlETTTALRUG
-- ------------------- *
m arried. W hen he tells his schem e to his
friend, Cathy, a C atholic lay worker, she is
shocked. A m aster o f situational ethics, he
tells her the m arriage doesn’t c o u n t as his
wife has left him .
At som e p o in t Boyle does do a little report­
ing. He goes out on a death patrol with photo­
grapher (John Savage), another very good
actor. Som e really horrible scenes are
revealed. We see what looks like a m ountain
o f dead and m angled bodies. The newsmen
photograph the dead to give to hospital
personnel, so people whose loved ones are
m issing can go through them to look fo r the
disappeared. Another tim e, Boyle is detained.
As he argues energetically, no m ention is
m ade o f a head sitting on a table. It's business
as usual in El Salvador.
Boyle com es right out and says that Reagan
was deploying troops and m aking moves in
C entral Am erica before he was even inau­
gurated. He claim s Reagan forces hired
Salvadorans to rape and m urder three nuns
and Cathy, in order to drum up sym pathy for
th e ir p ro je c t (I still rem em ber the clip o f Al
Haig, squirm ing, explaining how if it was
friends o f the adm inistration, it m ust have
been an a ccid e n t and later, W alter Cronkite
scoffing that this would surely be the first
accidental rape and execution in history.).
Boyle gets to the site o f the m urders and
sees Cathy, w ho’s been partially decapitated
by a shotgun b la st W hen he gets back to
tow n, a yuppie reporter, played by Valerie
W ildm an, tells him that the perpetrators did
the m urders fo r som e absurdly low sum and
a bottle o f Tick-Tack each. Then she tells him
the Am ericans claim the nuns were C om ­
m u nist sympathizers and asks Boyle what he
thinks. The look on his face says it all.
G rim y, slippery, unsanitary, this movie
m akes you want to go take a
bath. We
see people struggle to survive, all sides be­
com e hysterical, death begets death. We see
no sense to it at all. We see a lo t o f really fine
acting. The urgency, the spectacle, the cu t­
tin g loose fro m thought processes that m u s t
o f necessity accom pany w ar-m ongering —
it’s all there, and it’s tru ly fascinating.
long
As W arrant O fficer Ripley, Sigourney
W eaver again makes an indelible statem ent
fo r w om anhood. Finally picked up, after 57
years o f driftin g in a deep sleep on the
N ostrom o’s em ergency shuttle, technically,
she shouldn’t have aged at all. B ut there are
real-life w rinkles now around her m outh, and
she looks older, w hich works w onderfully
well, since it is the case that in her deep sleep,
Ripley has gathered strength, and becom e
even better.
B ut she’s having nightm ares. She’s given a
low ly jo b to pay back the Company, which
blam es her fo r the loss o f the N ostrom o, and
w ould like to pin the deaths o f the crew m em ­
bers on her, as well.
They interrogate her, refusing to accept
her data, getting her to repeat the story, hop­
ing she w ill m ake a mistake, or give up in
exhaustion.
A com pany m an tells her they have popu-
- lated the planet where she first encountered
the aliens. The crew was to w ork on an
atm osphere production cham ber, w hich they
erected and m aintained fo r 20 years. But
radio com m unications from the site have
ceased Ripley is h o rrified The com pany man
asks her to go on a m ission to investigate.
She turns him down, but again, has night­
mares. She calls him to ask how many people
are involved in the disappearance. He tells
her 60 o r 7 0 — fam ilies. She says she w ill go.
W hen Ripley finds o u t the D octor (Bishop)
in the crew is an android, she is furious. The
com pany m an rem em bers that there “ was
som e tro u b le ” with the last android. That one
had been program m ed to assure the success
o f the m ission (bringing back an alien for
study and possible m ilitary application) even
to the p o in t o f sacrificing all the crew m em ­
bers. Dirty.
A t any rate, Ripley can do nothing about it
A nother m acho m arine is in charge o f the
m ission, under the supervisory eye o f the
com pany m an, and between the m indless
obedience and the blatant greed, the m ission
forges relentlessly on.
T he com pany m an gave the order fo r the
little population to go to the caverns where the
alien eggs were located, ju st before radio
silence.
The landing party locates a survivor, a
young girl, N ew t Severely traum atized, she
eludes the crew. Ripley crawls through a little
d u ct and captures Newt in a dirty hiding
place, where she had apparently been surviv­
ing on ju n k food and adrenalin.
A t one p o in t Ripley and Newt are menaced
by the alien Queen. In a m ovie m arked by
go o d acting on all parts, this pantom im e
scene is the be st
As sequels go, m uch praise m ust be
given here. Those in charge have follow ed
the success pattern o f the series o f
books. T hat was the popular series wherein
the o ld Yaqui Indian sorcerer proved defini­
tively th a t a sociology student never outgrow s
nerdhood. The first one was a runaway hit,
and the au tho r proceeded to regroup the
ideas and sell another, then regroup them
again and sell another.
was not so
m u ch rew ritten, as rearranged.
A ll the elem ents are in ta c t The old rusty
tra ctors and copter parts m ay look m ore
m odem , bu t they are still w orn and grubby.
Jones appears in the beginning o f the film ,
bu t is superseded later by N ew t the young
in noce nt w ho m ust be rescued in the film ’s
clim ax. The cham ber w ith eggs in it is back as
a really big, explosively treacherous cham ber
w ith lots o f eggs and hum an coccoons in it
T here’s Ripley in her skivvies again, and just
as she donned a space suit to vanquish the
first alien, she dons a technologically m arvel­
ous “ su it” to vanquish the Queen. There’s
even the same silly sm all talk at the dinner
table. The treacherous “ com pany” is there,
bu t now personified by a schem ing oppor­
tu n is t A nd as we had te rro r and suspense in
we have the same brand o f
and
Don Juan
Alien
Alien,
terror
suspense in Aliens. Just as the only change
in the title is one added letter, you could say
th a t it’s the same great m ovie, only plural.
You take the
high road, and
I'll take your w allet
by W.C. McRae
Restless natives, a film shot in E dinburgh
and the Highlands, follow s the antics o f two
young "underem ployed" Scots who invent a
unique but lucrative career by com bining
thievery and scenery. The pair decide to em u­
late Rob Roy, a Scottish outlaw w ho robbed
fro m the medieval rich to give to the poor.
However, in m odem day Scotland the rich are
A m erican tourists w ho cross the hills and
m oors in buses, and the poor are, well, ju st
about everyone else. The tw o young daring-
doers use hum or, ingenuity, a m otorcycle,
and a “ puffer gun” which distributes curry
pow der into the eyes o f the resistant to gain
th e ir ends, but soon becom e tourist-attrac­
tio n s in th e ir own rig h t Am ericans are so
taken by being robbed by
highwaym en,
that they brandish the ir Am erican Express
cards in hopes o f being thieved. Tourism in
S cotland soars. However, the fun may be
over, fo r Yanks and Scots alike, when law and
order threatens in the form o f a recently-
robbed CIA ag ent
The im probability o f the film ’s premises
doesn’t detract from the strength o f the com ­
edy. W hile
is heavy on
whim sy, it is enaetd before the m ore dire
realities o f Scottish life: unem ploym ent
crim e, and poverty.
The gratuity o f the film ’s ending was studio
enforced, explained producer Rick Stevenson
at the film ’s opening — apparently, the idea
th a t the youths m ig h t not be punished, how­
ever m arginally, fo r their deeds rankled
corporate tastes. W ho needs the CIA when we
have such high m otion picture standards?
Stevenson sees
as p ri­
m arily a story o f friendship. The central roles
o f W ill and Ronnie, the tw o youths whose
determ ination to win fam e and fortune by fair
m eans o r foul makes them national heroes,
are played by Vincent Friell and Joe Mullaney,
S cottish television actors. The love interest, a
fetching to u r guide, is played by Terri Lally,
another Scottish TV personality. Veteran
A m erican actor Ned Beatty plays the CIA
agent caught up in the Scottish intrigue.
Tw enty-four-year-old E dinburgh native
N inian D unnett, wrote the script fo r
w hich won a Britain-w ide w riting
c o n te s t Film m akers Stevenson, a native o f
Seattle, and M ichael Hoffm an, o f Payette,
Idaho, were post-graduate students together
at O xford University. After taking their
degrees, they settled in O xford and form ed
the O xford R im Foundation.
is the team ’s second film .
real
Restless natives
Restless natives
Restless
natives,
Restless natives
f’OKTL'\hi) s rinr.sT cou.rcnopi
f'KOM
PERSIA, TURKEY. AFGHANISTAN.
F’AKISTAPI INDIA. CHINA,
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