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Under Fire

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Under Fire (1983)

October. 21,1983
|
7
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R
| Drama War
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Three U.S. journalists get too close to one another and their work in 1979 Nicaragua.

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Kattiera Nana
1983/10/21

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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Matialth
1983/10/22

Good concept, poorly executed.

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Bob
1983/10/23

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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Dana
1983/10/24

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

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sledhead535
1983/10/25

I worked in Nicaragua from February, 1971 to May, 1979. I also owned an Island off the Southeast Coast of Nicaragua near Monkey Point.The "popular" view by most filmmakers and "news people" of the time, viewed President Somoza as an evil man. What was thought to be a "saving Grace" for Nicaragua was a new Government.What everyone there GOT was a Socialist/Communist takeover fueled by the Left and (then) President- Jimmy Carter, who even blackmailed Israel into not helping the Contras and President Somoza.I always fume when I see "stories' of people and places written by people who were NEVER THERE. I WAS THERE. I SAW it FIRST HAND.President Somoza wasn't perfect. No one IS. But what they got was FAR WORSE. Nicaragua has been in my Family since 1928, when my Father and the U.S. Marines went there to help prevent Augusto Sandino from taking the country. My Association with my beloved Nicaragua ended in 1995.

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FilmCriticLalitRao
1983/10/26

American war film "Under Fire" can be read in many ways as it boasts of myriad feelings.Many cinema admirers might be tempted to call it a love story which happened during troubled times.However,this should not be construed as a comparison to classic film "Casablanca" which is still considered as the greatest love story filmed during times of war.By dint of a fresh air of genuineness,acclaimed action cinema director Roger Spottiswoode gives us a near perfect authentic version of what happened in Nicaragua in 1979 when Somoza was forced to flee to USA. Although this film has been shot in neighboring Mexico,honest depiction of Latin American topography and judicious choice of local actors are some of the elements which would make viewers feel as if this film has been shot on location in Nicaragua.Tough lives of journalists who report about war is shown through good performances by all leading actors such as Nick Nolte,Gene Hackman,Joanna Cassidy.Some screen space is also reserved for Ed Harris and veteran French acting genius Jean Louis Trintignant who play diabolically impish villains.At a time when controversial,exploitative war films such as "Black Hawk Dawn","In the valley of Elah" and "The Hurt Locker" are getting critical as well as commercial acclaim, one wonders which breed of true cinema admirers would ever bother to find out more about good war films such as "Under Fire" made in a not so distant past.

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raktratt
1983/10/27

A version of this comparison has already been posted over at "Salvador" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091886/ Salvador is Olvier Stone's best work and James Woods' finest performance. Perhaps my only regret about this movie has to do with it not going nearly far enough in depicting the brutality of the US client regime in El Salvador. But this observation does not count, as it doesn't have anything to do with the film as presented. A critique of Salvador would do much better to note that there are very few films about the political situation in Central America, period. Persons who are interested in the subject matter might do well to compare this Stone effort with the much earlier Under Fire (1983), a film which boasts superlative performances by Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman. Under Fire is perhaps one of the most under appreciated films, not just of the 1980s, but of all time. Both Under Fire and Salvador are head and shoulders above Ken Loach's limited tale of a Nicaraguan refugee's individual trauma - Carla's Song (made much later in 1996). Both earlier films were made at the time Central America was a major obsession of the Reagan Administration (which went so far as to suggest AK-47 toting Sandinistas were about to invade the Texas border). On account of this background alone, the respective cast and crews of both films deserve the sort of praise we should usually reserve for true artists rather than Hollywood's employees.Both Salvador and the much earlier Under Fire are very close in their subject matter: portraying disinterested journalists who only after becoming aware of the gravity of the situation in which they find themselves turn unsympathetic towards clients of the American Empire. The sort of journalists which have been entirely purged from the corporate-owned "mainstream" or "embedded" press in the United States (and the EU too).Both films do an outstanding job of noting the protagonists' rivals in the form of spin doctors for the regime whether from the US State Department or the corporate media. Characters like Salvador's ANS reporter Pauline Axelrod (played by Valerie Wildman) force us to recall the perverted scribblings of James Lemoyne (New York Times), the godfather of Embedded American Journalism; his students honored in that tribute to the corporate press, Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). Call that film for what it is: the anti-Salvador.Under Fire goes much deeper than Stone's film in questioning the ethics of journalism and the sort of circumstances which compel individuals to look at the bigger picture. The depiction of the conflict between Hackman and Nolte, on both personal and professional levels, makes it a very rewarding film. Salvador's portrait of a troubled has-been photojournalist who undergoes a sort of radical shock therapy in a war zone is different, but certainly no less interesting.I have to give the decisive edge to Under Fire for drawing much more attention to the nature and breadth of the foreign support upon which the corrupt Central American dictatorships relied. Salvador has a US helicopter turn up in the middle of a battle, an ambassador portrayed as indifferent, and that's about it. Under Fire, in contrast, has excellent performances by a young Ed Harris and Jean-Louis Tritignant as pro-regime killers, roles which draw attention to the nature and morality of those embattled dictatorships.Salvador counters with a much more interesting profile of some of the members of the so-called "government" and its military. In Under Fire, we just see Anastasio Somoza depicted as an insignificant car salesman type in the background who also happens to be the latest heir to the dynasty which ruled over Nicaragua for much of the 20th century. This was a wee bit dissatisfying.The major differences between the films are technical and stylistic. Some may prefer Stone's use of tight editing and rather fanciful action sequences. I personally preferred Under Fire's determined efforts to bring out as much stark realism as possible on screen especially in the battle scenes, which are among the most authentic attempts to portray urban and guerrilla warfare in the history of cinema. No, it's not as pretty as Tom Cruise dropping bombs to the accompaniment of Kenny Loggins, and any film which reveals as much deserves special praise. One wonders if "Under Fire" or "Salvador" could be made in Hollywood today.A 9/10 for Salvador and a 9/10 for Under Fire, and again hats off to all associated with films which one can hardly imagine being made in this Orwellian or "embedded" age.

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Robert J. Maxwell
1983/10/28

Basically it's the story of a journalist's gradually being coopted by one side in a conflict. He's not supposed to let that happen, you know? Reporters belong to a class of professionals that subscribe to a code of ethics in which making value judgments has no place. In that respect they're like shrinks, judges, and cultural anthropologists.But at the same time it's impossible to be impartial, unless you're completely ignorant of your subject. The tendency to judge things as "good" or "bad" is probably hard wired in human nature, and for good reasons. When our hominid ancestors first encountered a strange object or situation, they must have made instant decisions about whether this was going to turn out to be good or bad for them -- otherwise they'd get eaten and not have any more kids.Nick Nolte does what most professionals do. He tries to think objectively about the conflict between the Sandinistas and Samoza's forces in Nicaragua, and he fails. Then he tries to merely ACT objectively, and he fails at that too. And yet the movie, and the revolution it depicts, turns on the one true photo Nolte is able to take, of the shooting death of his friend Hackman by the National Guard, which Samoza has been blaming on the Sandinistas. The rebels win.The movie's pedantic, of course, but not as insulting as it might be. Not as insulting as, say, Costa-Gavras' "Missing," which assumes that Americans are stereotypical right-wing dummies who need to be patiently instructed in how corrupt our policies are, like a class of kindergarten kids. Okay, we're dumb -- but not THAT dumb. "Under Fire" doesn't show us any good guys on Samoza's side, but it also mutes the sentimentality with which the rebels are treated. We see some of them as scared and excited kids wielding guns and killing people for no discernible reason. Another woman tells the dead Hackman's ex girl friend, "Fifty thousand Nicaraguans have died. Now they kill one American and the world is outraged. Maybe we should have killed an American fifty years ago." (I give the writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they never meant to advance that as an reasonable position.) Yet the rebels ARE treated rather gently. One young man, finding that Nolte and Cassidy are Americans, eagerly signs a baseball and tells them that when they get back to the USA they should give the ball to Dennis Martinez, whom I take to be a pro ball player. This kid, Pedro I think he's called, shows us the jolly side of revolution. He's the equivalent of those kids in the old war movies who learn to speak a choppy English with a lot of slang in it. And who do we have on the other side? Samoza himself, another "brutal dictator" of the sort we've lately taken to deposing. We can tell he's nasty because he barks at his subordinates, exudes an oily charm with foreigners, and has an eye for the ladies. Trintignant has an eye for the ladies too. He has been an extraordinary actor in some roles (eg., "The Conformist"), his presence suggesting a kind of earnest weakness, but here his moral nihilist is hampered by his English. It's understandable that he should feel that whichever side wins, you still end up with a tyrant, but it's hard to believe he feels it. And then we have Richard Masur as an American-appointed Talking Chief for Samoza. He gives Nicaragua two options: Either Samoza wins with American help, solves the problem of poverty, and turns Nicaragua into a democracy, or the Communists take over the world. When the news comes out that Hackman has been killed, Masur runs into Cassidy, smiles, spreads his arms helplessly, and tells her, "A human tragedy. What can I say?" Then there is Ed Harris as the American mercenary, cheerfully slaughtering the rebels he's being paid to kill, thick skinned, just as pleased when the Sandinistas win as he was before.The film makers don't exactly give us a level playing field, but then how could they without seeming ridiculous? Samoza, after all, was a pretty nasty guy. (Somebody finally caught up with him after he found refuge in Florida, as I recall.)The acting is good, all around, as is the photography and location shooting.What a dismal and dangerous place. And journalists have to prowl these streets for a living. Even a cover on Time Magazine wouldn't get me to drive around the rubble filled streets of Managua. Or even Newark, New Jersey, for that matter. Excellent use is made of Jerry Goldsmith's score. It's introduced after some time, done softly, a tune suggestive of Inca music, using wooden flutes and guitar. The theme becomes more fully orchestrated later, more dramatic and insistent. It's always associated with the rebels and at the end, when the rebels roll through the streets, it does everything but turn into the 1812 Overture.This is for adults. Most of the characters are more real than stereotypical. Look at Joanna Cassidy. She's not a glossy Penthouse centerfold. She's a grown-up with an adult daughter and thoughtful blue eyes. And although we naturally want the Sandinistas to win, we have to wonder if Nolte did the right thing in falsely boosting the morale of the guerillas. By cheating and by taking sides, he's weakened the privileged status of journalists everywhere. It's a thought-provoking movie, and full of action. Well done.

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