Latino (Wexler, 1985): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm
This is a 35mm screening in the Celluloid on Sunday strand at the ICA Cinema.
Time Out review:
After the impressive but inevitably compromised Under Fire, it's
good to see a movie that deals with conflict in Central America with a
real sense of commitment. Haskell Wexler's brazenly partisan film may lack the
artistic sophistication of its mainstream counterparts, but it gains in
power by focusing not on the familiar 'neutral' journalist/photographer
figure, but on an invading American soldier, a Green Beret lieutenant
(Robert Beltran) drafted to Honduras to train a platoon of 'Contras' for secret
raids on Nicaragua. There he becomes embroiled not only in the
infliction of death, torture and US propaganda upon the Sandinistas, but
in the contradictions of his position. First, he's a Latin American
himself; second, he falls for a woman working in Honduras who hails from
the village that is his prime target. Wexler's methods involve passion
rather than 'balance': black-and-white moralising may occasionally be
the result, but there's no denying the emotional punch dealt by the
assured combination of taut narrative and intelligently researched
context.
Geoff Andrew
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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