A Dark Truth

Damian Lee’s A Dark Truth (2012) is an action and thriller movie that narrates the story of an armed conflict between the people of an agrarian community in Ecuador, and an international corporation (helped by the local government) which has purchased all water rights of the area for their profit. Though conflicts over water have been reported in documentaries several times, the first movie about contested water rights in Latin America was Tambien la Lluvia (Even the Rain) in 2010. The drama was about the best-known reactionary conflict on the issue using information of real events experienced in Bolivia from an insider point of view (it portrayed the reality of those being affected by water privatization). However, Lee delivers this new production on the same topic but with a new perspective. Its plot focuses on the escalation of the armed battle and how it is handled internationally.

Clearbec, a Canadian corporation that has invested in water rights purchase in Latin America and South Africa to provide “quality water” back in North America, has been linked to a violent upheaval in one of its supplier countries. In a fictional village called Tayca in Ecuador (though the filming location is the Dominican Republic), an eco-activist has organized peasants to protest the privatization and exploitation of their water sources. In an attempt to stop the pacifist demonstrations, the military forces in Ecuador paid by Clearbec started a massacre targeting protestors and their leader, Francisco Francis (Forest Whitaker) who is now being accused of eco-terrorism. In Toronto, Jack (Andy García), a CIA retiree, is hired by one of the CEOs of the corporation to investigate what happened in Ecuador and bring back Francisco Francis, so all the world can know the truth, even if this could mean the decay of the water privatization business and the company’s reputation globally. Tensions become stronger and more violent between all the parties involved in both Ecuador and Canada when the dark truth is about to be revealed. Jack finds the ecology activist and takes him to Toronto so he can speak up about the ecological damages and the social injustices committed against Ecuadorian peasants to fulfill Clearbec’s economic interests.

Lee depicts corporate businesses that turn vital resources rights (such as water and air) into commodities with a price in the market as morally wrong. But in contrast to Bollaín's Even the Rain, this movie is not a political critique to private corporatism or neoliberalism. Any ideological position that the plot might suggest is ambiguous. For example, Jack opposes the privatization of water publicly, however, his opposition is only a personal point of view. It becomes a problem when he is informed that people are dying for it, the reason for escalating violence which he will not try to stop, but only help someone scape (an interesting narrative to build an action movie). That might be why deeper details about the problem are omitted.  In the same way, very little is said about Ecuador's government and politics other than corporate bribery that was used to induce the state's military involvement. Indeed, any other country in the world could be a perfect location for what this movie offers. 

Latin America is only a place, and the water privatization is only background information that gives the conflict, typical of a Hollywood action movie, a bit more of sense. And since portraying the place or the issue accurately is not of importance for this movie´s plot, simple aspects such as descriptions of Ecuadorean cities or its people are hugely mistaken such as knowing that its capital is not of tropical weather with jungle sounds in the background, or that “Esmeralda” province is actually called Esmeraldas. Even “typical” phrases Ecuadoreans might say and the way its people look are totally out of place. But those little things do not affect the overall story, the audience only needs to know that a bad company had corrupt businesses in some poor village in some part of a tropical place with a lot of natural resources to exploit, and this is morally wrong.

Duck, You Sucker!

Duck, You Sucker! (1971) is the work of Sergio Leone, director of the famous Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood. Despite having attracted little recognition in its day, it is one of the most interesting examples of how Leone splices political commentary into his movies alongside the locomotive explosions and wild shootouts.

Duck, You Sucker! tells the story of how a troubled ex-IRA explosives expert and a Mexican bandit become caught up in the Mexican Revolution. The movie begins with an abridged Mao Tse-Tung quote on how “revolution is an act of violence,” followed by the metaphor-laden image of a stream of piss drowning an ant colony. It is clear that Duck, You Sucker! will be no ordinary Western. The urine comes from Juan Miranda, a grubby and crude Mexican who catches a ride from a coach driver who wants to play a joke on his ostentatious passengers. Throughout the journey, Juan passively receives the demeaning insults hurled at him by the rich Europeans and Americans, but when the coach pulls into town and is seized his family of shotgun-wielding bandits, the tables are suddenly turned. Juan has all of them, the men stripped naked, dumped into an animal pen. Juan and his boys, fathered with an unknown number of women, take to the road and before long encounter John Mallory. Juan instantly tries to enlist him to rob the legendary Banco Nacional de Mesa Verde. John, aside from fleeing the British Secret Service for his terrorist activities, is escaping his painful past, which we periodically see in gauzy, dialogue-free flashbacks.

After Juan carelessly detonates a church that John has rigged, killing Mexican military personnel and a German mine owner, the two men proceed to Mesa Verde. Mesa Verde is in the grip of a tyrannical governor who conducts public executions. The pair descend into a dingy basement where revolutionaries, lead by a Dr. Villega, are planning a coordinated attack with Villa and Zapata. John is already in league with them and they tell the confused Juan to go ahead with his planned bank robbery. On the day of the attack, John detonates the bank entrance and Juan and his boys fight through the federal soldiers inside. After blowing the locks off the store rooms, Juan finds no cash but becomes an unwitting revolutionary hero; the bank was recently converted into a political prison and held 150 men, who now pour out into the streets. Later, in an encampment outside Mesa Verde, Juan expresses his resentment at being tricked into participating in the revolution. He assails John with a cynical rant about how a revolution involves “the people who read the books” discussing ideas around the dinner table and inciting “the people who don’t read the books” to loose their lives fighting.

This rant piques John’s conscience, leading him and Juan to attack a federal army contingent by machine gun then detonate the bridge underneath them. Meanwhile, there is a massacre at the encampment, including Juan’s six young boys. John solemnly observes while Juan grieves. When Juan is captured by the federal army, John goes into town and witnesses the revolutionary ringleaders being shot, noting that the ringleaders were betrayed by Dr. Villega. The next day, John rescues Juan on motorbike and they stow away on a train carrying the governor. Before long, the train is held up by revolutionaries and Juan shoots the escaping governor in vengeance for his children, elevating yet again his revolutionary status. Revolutionary leaders tell the duo that a military train loaded with over a thousand soldiers and heavy weapons is coming straight towards them, and they can expect no reinforcement. When night falls, John loads the locomotive with explosives and takes Dr. Villega on a kamikaze charge into the oncoming train; he finds that he ultimately cannot judge Dr. Villega for he regrets killing his Irish friend who too was an informer. The trains crash, with John jumping out just in time, and the revolutionaries finish off the survivors. John is shot the back; in the moments before death he returns the cross that Juan cast away after the massacre, then drifts off into happy memories of Ireland. As Juan frantically leaves to get help, John blows himself up in a death fitting to an explosives expert.

Duck, You Sucker! can be read as Leone’s protest against filmmakers who romanticize and sanitize revolution by avoiding the depiction of brutality and creating impossibly pure heroes. At the same time, he creates monsters of the Mexican governors and military colonels and the foreign capitalists, creating uniformly evil villains. These characters are thoroughly despicable, from the pretentious Europeans and Americans who have the manner and appetite of pigs, to the Nazi-like Mexican federal forces who drive in armored tanks and execute peasants en mass. Though Leone makes his political allegiance with the peasant class very clear, unlike many revolution-themed movies the heroes are selfish and fallible. This is true of John, who is haunted by having murdered his friend for a cause, and especially of Juan, who is considered a revolutionary hero because he freed the political prisoners and killed the governor, but he was first motivated by bank robbery then by personal revenge. In Duck, You Sucker! the Mexican Revolution provides a context in which to denounce the glorification of war, where killers can become heroes and friends turned into enemies. Interestingly, Duck, You Sucker! has a complicated release history in which scenes of violence at profanity have been edited out and later restored. It seems that when the movie was released in 1971, right in the middle of the Vietnam War (1959-1975), American audiences did not have a pallet for depictions of massacres and morally troubled heroes.

The Way of the Gun

The Way of the Gun is a 2000 film from Christopher McQuarrie, director of The Usual Suspects. It begins with the introduction of our two protagonists, let's call them "Parker" (Ryan Phillippe) and "Longbaugh" (Benicio Del Toro), like the real names of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are a criminal duo, looking to make a buck in whatever situation they encounter, stealing their way through life. While at a sperm donation facility trying to make some money, they overhear a telephone conversation concerning a $1 million payment to the surrogate mother of a rich man's unborn child. Their interest is piqued, and they go to the fertility clinic they heard named in the phone call, planning to kidnap the surrogate mother for ransom. Unbeknownst to them, the parents of the unborn child are Hal Chidduck, a crooked millionaire, and his young trophy wife. The surrogate, Robin, is carefully protected by a team of bodyguards whose leaders are Jeffers and Obecks, two cold-blooded associates of Chidduck's. As Robin and her bodyguards are leaving the pregnancy clinic, Parker and Longbaugh attempt to kidnap her, but this proves difficult and results in a shootout. Jeffers tells Robin to go inside and up the elevator, as his priority is protecting the Chidduck's baby at all costs. She begins to do so, but then suddenly determinedly walks out the doors where the shootout is taking place, risking her life. Parker and Longbaugh manage to kill all Robin's bodyguards and snatch Robin, stuffing her into their car and driving off. Jeffers and Obecks have survived the shootout and follow the kidnappers in their car. The following car chase proves futile for Jeffers and Obecks, who are arrested by the police as they pursue the fleeing kidnappers. These scenes show the well-honed skills of Parker and Longbaugh in the art of reckless violence.

As the fugitives head south for Mexico, Jeffers and Obecks are bailed out of jail by Joe Sarno (James Caan), a seasoned operative and close friend of Chidduck's, a man who does all the dirty work necessary to take care of Chidduck's business. Sarno begins to coordinate the rescue of Robin, to whom it seems he is personally attached. Meanwhile, the fugitives are with Robin at a truck stop just before the border; as they rest, Robin starts to suffer nausea and pain, causing the kidnappers to call her gynecologist Allen Painter and order him to confidentially come to the truck stop to treat her. Allen Painter arrives and, at gunpoint, determines that Robin's sickness comes from dehydration and that she should be fine. When he returns from the examination, he heads straight for Chidduck's house, and it is revealed that Painter is Mr. Chidduck's son. At this point, Painter's phone rings and Longbaugh is at the other end, demanding a $15 million ransom for Robin and the baby. Chidduck is enraged because the payment of this ransom will lead a money trail back to the people he does business with, dangerous people who will avenge themselves by killing Chidduck and his family if their business is discovered. He sends Sarno as a "bag man" to try to cut a deal with the kidnappers, who are now at a Mexican roadside motel with Robin. Sarno offers Longbaugh $1 million if he surrenders Robin and walks away, but Longbaugh refuses and returns to the hotel room where Parker and Robin are playing cards. Here, Robin admits that her initial agreement to have the Chidduck's baby because she needed the money has given way to a feeling of maternal possessiveness of the baby. Meanwhile, Jeffers and Obecks are at the Chidducks' house planning a way that they can keep the money by killing everyone and safely returning Robin to the Chidducks while pretending that the ransom payment has gone smoothly. Here, it is also revealed that Jeffers is having an affair with Chidduck's young wife. The time comes for the ransom to be paid, and Jeffers, Obecks, and Painter drive down to the motel; Sarno drives down separately with $15 million in duffel bags. At the motel, Parker is having second thoughts about the kidnapping and tries to convince Longbaugh to walk away, giving Robin the opportunity to barricade herself inside the hotel room with a shotgun, shouting at them to leave. Robin manages to call the police from the room, and when their sirens approach, Parker and Longbaugh escape into the hills. Two Mexican police officers arrive, followed by a car carrying Jeffers, Obecks, and Painter. Painter and the bodyguards try to convince Robin to leave with them, but she is hesitant, causing the Mexicans to draw their guns and make everyone lie down on the ground. Suddenly, Parker and Longbaugh start shooting from a nearby hilltop, resulting in a brutal shootout that kills the two Mexican officers and wounds Obecks. Painter and Jeffers drag Robin into their car and drive south, leaving Obecks behind. The kidnappers run down to the motel and pick up Obecks, taking him into the hills and torturing him until he reveals Jeffers' destination.

The destination is a secluded Mexican brothel, where Robin is confined to a seedy room with Dr. Painter. Robin is in severe pain and bleeding heavily because the placenta has torn away from the uterine wall, and Painter realizes that he must perform a Caesarian section to save the child. At this point, Robin reveals that the child is not the Chidducks', but hers and Dr. Painter's; the baby was conceived because the in vitro fertilization did not take and she was desperate for the money. During the bloody and non-sterile operation, the heavily-armed Parker and Longbaugh invade the brothel and search for Robin, exchanging shots with Jeffers as well as a Sarno and his henchmen, who have also infiltrated the brothel. When the two kidnappers enter the room where Robin is, Jeffers threatens to kill Painter and the baby to stop them from shooting, but Painter shoots Jeffers in the throat with a hidden gun. Now Parker wants to kidnap Robin again, but Longbaugh refuses, saying "She's had enough". Robin is sedated and covered in blood, struggling to survive as Dr. Painter digs his hands into her belly, trying to get the baby out. Outside, Sarno and his men have stacked the $15 million in the brothel's courtyard and await to ambush the kidnappers. As Parker and Longbaugh emerge from the building, there is a violent shootout in which they kill all of Sarno's men except Sarno, who shoots both kidnappers in the legs, maiming them to the point of immobility. He then calls an ambulance, which arrives just as the cries of a baby are heard. Painter and Robin emerge with the paramedics, a newborn baby in Robin's arms. It is implied that Robin is Sarno's daughter. The ambulance takes Robin, Sarno, and Painter with the $15 million away, leaving Parker and Longbaugh dying in the dust. The final scene shows Chidduck's wife, days later and miles away, telling Chidduck that she is pregnant.

Mexico for Parker and Longbaugh is a place to which they can escape, collect their thoughts, and get ready for the money transfer. The ransom payment must occur in a neutral place, and a seedy Mexican motel seems just right, a place where people are unconcerned with their business. It is not, however, a place where they are safe from Chidduck's men; indeed, it seems the Mexican border is a porous, penetrable line through which the men pass at will and without difficulty. The same reckless violence and lawlessness exists on both sides of the border, with no difference between the truck stop north of the border and the motel south of the border. Both places are seedy, dusty, and surrounded by desert. After the shootout in the motel parking lot, a group of Mexican men who were sitting in the bar stand silently outside, observing the scene. They do not get involved, not even to help the screaming, pregnant Robin. When the Americans leave, they turn around, poker-faced, and re-enter the bar. The brothel where the final violent events occur is a bewildering place. It seems deserted and quiet, a dead place; inside there are rooms full of prostitutes, but they make little noise. It seems that the protagonists are the only people there throughout all the action, reinforcing the notion that Mexico is a place of neutrality, where the Mexicans stay out of whatever violent business the Americans choose to negotiate there.

The theme of moral ambiguity is prominent in the film, with no character evoking true sympathy. Everyone is generally bad, but shows evidence of goodness at some points in the film. The evil millionaire Hal Chidduck is still excited to be a father and will do anything to save his unborn child; his vacuous, heartless blonde wife shows a maternal instinct in her desire to have a child. The bodyguards Obecks and Jeffers are just doing their jobs. Sarno is just doing his job as well, but he cares deeply for Robin and the child and makes several merciful and good decisions throughout the film, leading him to save the day and call an ambulance. Painter is a weak man who has worked for his crooked father, but he saves Robin and her baby's lives. Robin lies about her pregnancy to make $1 million, but she cares deeply for her baby's life and is primarily a victim throughout the film. Parker and Longbaugh show mercy and kindness to Robin while she is in their possession, as well as abandoning their efforts to kidnap her in her condition at the end. The Mexicans in the film are also morally ambiguous. They are bystanders, watching indifferently as people kill each other. They are also policemen, who try to save Robin from the dangerous men who pursue her, and lose their lives doing so. They are prostitutes, disinterested in the violence that surrounds them, but they are also ambulance drivers who come and make order of the chaos. The Mexican border is just a line, dividing no one. People are neither good nor evil on both sides of the border, and national lines have no effect on morality.

Django

Django (1966) is a lurid B-movie, banned in the UK for over 25 years due to its grisly scenes, but is also a classic in the Spaghetti Western genre for director Sergio Corbucci’s apocalyptic vision of the West. Django’s plot follows a similar course to Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961), about a mercenary who arrives in a town with two rival factions, and by making selective alliances leads them to destroy each other in bloody warfare. This archetype was famously employed by Sergio Leone in his Dollars trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, but Django is tremendously darker than the Dollars trilogy in the moral conduct of its characters, the level of explicit violence, and even the physical environment.

As the opening credits roll, Django is seen dragging a coffin across a bleak craggy landscape upon a layer of slick grey mud. Most folks in the Old West traveled long distances by horse; most folks were not as tough as Django. The first scene is of a Mexican gang whipping a beautiful prostitute tied between poles in a remote desert. Unlike any other Western hero, who would have turned the horrific scene into a display of heroism, Django merely watches. Suddenly a band of red-scarved gunslingers shoot the Mexicans and untie the woman, only to accuse her of moral depravity and prepare a cross to burn her on. Only then does Django take pity on her, shoot her captors and take her to the nearest town. The town is a collection of decrepit buildings lining a street of churned-up mud; there is not a living soul except for in the brothel. The brothel owner, a nervous man named Nathaniel, lays out the local politics for Django. Death has loomed large over the town due rivalry between the Mexican gang led by General Hugo Rodriguez and the Confederate gang of Major Jackson; the main prostitute, Maria, vexed the gangs by seeking business from both of them.

Corbucci establishes Major Jackson as evil incarnate when his henchmen, wearing the red scarves turned into KKK hoods, whip Mexican peasants into running so he can use them as target practice. In the brothel, where Jackson charges Nathaniel an exorbitant “protection” fee, Jackson describes to Django his private fight for white supremacy, hanging on to the Confederacy despite the post-Civil War era. Sensing a shoot-or-be-shot scenario, Django kills all the Confederates except Jackson, inviting Jackson and his 48-strong army to fight against only himself. Based on a conversation in which Django expresses that Jackson has no right to think that Mexicans are inferior, one might assume that Django is a noble vigilante out to destroy the KKK. However, after a spectacular battle in which he whips out a machine gun from his mysterious coffin and plows down scores of Jackson’s men, we discover that his sole motivation is to avenge his lover’s death at Jackson’s hands.

General Rodriguez’s reprehensible character is displayed in a fantastically gory scene where he and his henchmen slice the ear off a Confederate spy, force it into his mouth, and then shoot him in the back. Surprisingly, Rodriguez and Django are old friends, albeit a friendship shot through with mutual distrust. This is most surprising to Maria, who is handed back to her torturers by the one man she thought cared about her. Rodriguez is awe-struck by the power of the machine gun and hatches a plan to rob Jackson’s gold in order to buy more machine guns to conquer Mexico with. Django helps to plan the heist, wanting a cut of the gold. They use Nathaniel’s traveling brothel as a Trojan horse; once inside Jackson’s fort, the Mexican gang bursts out of the carriage with guns blazing and make off with the gold. However, Rodriguez makes clear his intention to deny Django his share of the loot, so Django covertly fills his coffin with it and escapes, unwillingly taking Maria with him. Rodriquez catches up to them as they hopelessly try to retrieve the coffin from quicksand; he shoots Maria and orders a henchman to cruelly smash Django’s hands. The pair survives and Django deposits Maria at the brothel, leaving a message that he awaits Jackson at the cemetery. After many miserable attempts to prop his gun on a cross with his bloodied hands, Django kills Jackson and his men in rapid succession. He slowly walks away from the massacre over the crest of the hill, destitute and broken but liberated from his burden.

Django is a notable film in the Western genre, pushing the envelope for the depiction of graphic violence, and bringing a darker twist to Sergio Leone’s anti-hero archetype. As Django is an Italian-made film, its director makes an effort to replicate the conventions of American Westerns, but to an extreme and often at the expense of realism. Mexican generals and renegade members of the Confederate military are often cast as the villains of American Westerns, but Rodriguez and Jackson take the sadism expected of villains to such an extreme that Django was either banned or highly rated in many countries. Many American Westerns have a preoccupation with the U.S.-Mexico border, tending to promote the message of a closed border that can only be crossed by diplomatic negotiation. In Django, Jackson is leading the cavalry to chase the Mexican gang who has robbed his gold, but the minute in which the gang crosses the border, the cavalry stops dead in their tracks. Despite being in the middle of an unidentifiable wasteland, they halt on this invisible line and explain to an irate Jackson that they can go no further. This projection of the fixity of the U.S.-Mexico border is a staple of American Westerns, but in Django it comes off as absurd. The American West seen as abject and unsterilized through Corbucci’s eyes has made Django an iconographic film for the era of cynical Westerns. On top of creating a gritty antithesis to the clean-cut cowboy, Corbucci invented a macabre setting to contrast with the sun-parched landscapes typical to Westerns. In Django, with its dilapidated town which is home to no one but a brothel of sickly prostitutes, nothing avoids being caked in blood and mud.

Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals

The 1977 soft-porn horror flick Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals begins in an American insane asylum with the plot’s heroine Emanuelle (Laura Gemser), a star journalist posing as a crazy woman on the female ward in order to get the exclusive story about the young, white cannibal girl from the Amazon who had just arrived. The first scene’s slow survey of the ward’s inhabitants is abruptly interrupted by a nurse, half-dressed, running down the hall screaming. The bloody stump that was her right breast is shown quite graphically as the orderlies blatantly explain that such a vicious act was the work of the new cannibal patient, whom they try to restrain with a straight jacket as she munches on a chunk of flesh in the corner of the room. That night, Emanuelle sneaks into the cannibal’s room and attempts to ask her some questions. When the girl becomes frightened, Emanuelle displays her unusual methods of journalism by reaching under the girl’s skirt and pleasuring her to calm her down. While doing this, Emanuelle notices a tribal tattoo on the girl’s midriff and proceeds to snap a photo of this “white child raised by a wild tribe of the Amazon” to bring back to her editor. The next day, Emanuelle is sent by her editor to Professor Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti), a leading expert on cannibalistic tribes. The pair watch documentaries on tribal customs, plan an expedition to the Amazon to study the girl’s near-extinct tribe of Apiaca cannibals, and then indulge in a session of wild sex (which was obviously well-deserved after such difficult research).

The following day, despite warnings from co-workers of the dangers they may encounter, Emanuelle and Mark jet off to the Amazon. They meet with Mark’s old friends, who are part of a religious organization, and decide to bring Sister Angela and an acquaintance named Isabel on their journey to the organization’s Mission, located deep in the jungle. The night before the group departs, Isabel spies Emanuelle and Mark having sex and as a result proceeds to touch herself. The next day she tells Emanuelle that she had seen them and the three then begin exchanging sly sexual glances while traveling up the Amazon River in a motorboat. When the expedition stops to make camp, Emanuelle has a close-encounter with a snake, but is saved by avid hunter Donald McKenzie who miraculously appears without a moment to spare. He advises that the group join his camp set-up, with his wife Maggie, native assistant Salvador, and several others, because the cannibals had massacred everyone at the Mission. It is soon realized that Maggie is not completely faithful to Donald as she sneaks off with Salvador into the jungle. Donald secretly spies them together, but when he confronts Maggie as a tramp, she calls him impotent and the fight apparently dissolves. Mark gets nervous about being out in the jungle with the cannibals and Donald steadfastly refuses to go back to civilization with them, up until a half-eaten body is found on the beach by their boat. He then whispers to Maggie that they’ll travel with the group to safety and then continue the search. What they are searching for remains a mystery.

Their escape route proves dangerous when Angela ventures into the bush to relieve herself and is captured by the cannibals. Her naked body is then ripped apart as her search party can only listen to the blood-curdling screams. The next day when Donald is supposed to be keeping watch, he and Maggie slip off into the jungle to finally find the site of a small plane crash, the one which they had been searching for. They uncover a case with two small, leather pouches full of diamonds. Donald then apparently overcomes his impotency as they immediately have celebratory sex on the jungle floor. The cannibals take this chance to wound Donald and carry Maggie away. The rest of the group then comes to Donald’s rescue, salvages a blow-up boat and some flares from the plane crash, and sets off towards the cannibals’ island. The rescue mission splits into two groups and soon Emanuelle and Mark look on from the trees as Salvador is killed and Isabel and Donald are taken hostage. The final scene takes a turn for the worst as the nauseating cannibalism continues. Isabel is quickly drugged, while Maggie is gouged in the genitalia and the cannibals ravenously pull out her insides. Donald, who is already faint with what he has witnessed, is then sliced in half by the pulling of a taut rope around his waist. Watching from the trees, Mark quietly explains to Emanuelle that what they are witnessing is probably the annual Feast of Fertility on the full moon, and the tribe will use Isabel as their pregnant sacrifice to the Goddess of the Waters. Just as Emanuelle interjects that Isabel isn’t pregnant, the first of the cannibals has his way with Isabel’s drugged body. Unable to watch the succession of rape, Emanuelle and Mark sneak away to the river where Emanuelle gets the idea to paint the tribe’s tattoo on her belly and then rise naked from the water just as the cannibals are about to sacrifice Isabel on the sacrificial stone at the water’s edge. The plan works perfectly and Emanuelle ushers Isabel to the safety of the water in front of the astonished cannibals. But as the women begin to swim hurriedly away, the tribe becomes wise and chases after them in canoes. Tension mounts as Mark tries in vain to start the motorboat and the cannibals paddle closer, but the motor soon roars to life and the three foreigners speed away. Now out of harm's way, Emanuelle takes a moment to ponder the events and the carnage of the last few days, and realizes with dismay that a journalist will do almost anything for a story.

Stemming from the fact that this genre of film is a blemish on the face of the movie industry, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals certainly doesn’t do much in terms of promoting the Amazon as a tourist destination. From quicksand to cannibals to poisonous animals, the characters encounter at every turn the dangers which they’ve been warned about. The film portrays the all-male tribe as mindless and flesh-obsessed, and gives them the erroneous title of ‘the last cannibals’. Emanuelle’s editor continues this inaccuracy by classifying the cannibals’ traditional tattoo as Aztec; even though the Aztec Empire was located in Central America, not Brazil. It is also left hanging as to why the blonde, white woman from the first scene would have been raised in the care of such flesh-eating men. Such blunders make the statement: “True story as reported by Jennifer O’Sullivan”, which appears in the beginning credits, laughable. Perhaps Miss O’Sullivan had been actively indulging in opana, the same narcotic that allegedly triggered the tribe’s cannibalistic nature, when she reported such an account.

A Fistful of Dollars

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) has a fascinating lineage; the film was directed by an Italian, who based it on Yojimbo (1961) by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who in turn was influenced by the Westerns of John Ford. The film was shot in Spain and takes place in Mexico, but it is also profoundly American with its choice of hero and thematic preoccupations. Clint Eastwood is this hero, a tough-as-nails mercenary who becomes embroiled in the feud between two families for supremacy over the town of San Miguel. Eastwood plays them against each other until he is the last man standing on a dirt road littered with corpses, and San Miguel is finally purged of its criminal population.

The film opens with Eastwood, who is sparsely referred to as Joe, riding into the sun-parched and seedy San Miguel. He befriends the barman, Silvanito, who describes the local politics: The town is run by two competing families, the family of the town sheriff, John Baxter, and the Rojos brothers which include the prudent Don Miguel, the reckless Esteban, and the intelligent and ruthless Ramon, who is the leader. Silvanito says, “They’ve enlisted all the scum that hangs around on both sides of the frontier and they pay in dollars.” Joe does not mind being employed alongside this scum, so he solicits Don Miguel and Estaban for work and they hire him. Ramon is introduced when, after killing an American cavalry squadron and donning their uniforms, his men lure the Mexican military to trade gold for American guns and instead massacre every last soldier. The massage is clear that Ramon means business.

Joe remains indifferent to San Miguel politics meanwhile he plays the Baxters and the Rojos against each other, and extorts money from both. However, something changes in Joe after he witnesses the Rojos trading a Baxter hostage for Marisol, a woman he has been told that Ramon is madly in love with. During the trade-off, Marisol is spotted by a wailing child, and she runs to him with an agonized, tear-stained face to embrace him and his father, before being torn away by Ramon. Silvanito tells Joe that Marisol was taken for ransom after Ramon accused her husband of cheating at cards, and that he threatened to kill the child should her husband resist. That very night, Joe slaughters the men guarding Marisol, leads her to her husband, thrusts a wad of bills into her hand and directs the thankful trio to the United States. Ramon apprehends Joe and has him brutalized, but despite being too battered to walk upright and having one eye swollen shut, Joe is still sharp enough to engineer his escape.

Ramon is crazed with anger and hell-bent on retribution; he launches a manhunt for Joe with orders to torture Silvanito and torch any building that Joe may be hiding in. A broken and tattered Joe drags himself to the coffin-maker, the only other man in town besides the Baxters and Rojos who makes money, and the kindly man evacuates him from San Miguel in a coffin. As they ride by the Baxter homestead Joe peeks out from under the lid to witness a scene which is the pinnacle of excessive violence in the film; the Rojos engulf the home in flames and as Baxters come stumbling out, choking on smoke and shouting their surrender, the Rojos gun them down with cruel enjoyment. Even Eastwood, with his trademark passive face, is visibly sickened by this spectacle, and in the following days he spends recuperating, one can see his hardened resolve to eliminate the Rojos. Just as the Rojos are torturing Silvanito, Joe emerges from billows of dynamite smoke and proceeds to have a climactic shoot-out with Ramon, who he astounds by hiding a bullet-proof breastplate under his poncho. After the last body hits the ground, Joe bids Silvanito and the coffin-maker farewell, taking no reward with him other than the satisfaction that between him and Ramon, he had the faster draw.

A Fistful of Dollars is a cynical film in that noble human emotions are glimpsed only a few times in comparison to the selfishness, rage, jealousy, deceitfulness and cruelty portrayed. Yet even the most honorable action, of Joe enabling Marisol to escape, was not based on any moral code. When Marisol asks, “Why do you do this for us?” Joe answers, “Why? I knew someone like you once and there was no one to there to help. Now get moving.” He could just as easily have not done this, like at the beginning of the film when Ramon’s men shoot at Marisol’s child and Joe merely stands by. A Fistful of Dollars is unlike typical Westerns in that the hero does not act upon moral ideology but impulses; he has no complex back-story to help the viewer understand his motivations.

The “frontier” looms large in A Fistful of Dollars. For Marisol, the border is a gateway to a better world in which Ramon has no jurisdiction. However, the border is more generally portrayed as lawless zone where the arm of state power fails to reach, and thus the most degenerate elements of both societies, from Mexican crime-lords to shiftless Texan drunkards, congregate there. Unlike in the Westerns of previous eras, in which the frontier was replete with promise, or at the least kept under control by the hero, frontier lawlessness in A Fistful of Dollars is beyond the scope of any one man. However, after a massive amount of bloodshed, Joe does manage to save San Miguel from the clutches of criminality. The violence in A Fistful of Dollars takes many, often brutal forms, but it is ultimately justifiable because of its cathartic role. In order to become a civilized place, San Miguel must endure its darkest hour of savagery, from the hero as well as from the villains.

Missing

Missing is a 1982 film based on the true story of American journalist Charles Horman, who disappeared in the bloody aftermath of the U.S.-backed Chilean military coup of 1973 that deposed President Salvador Allende. The film was banned in Chile during General Pinochet's regime. Both the film and the book on which it is based, Thomas Hauser's The Execution of Charles Horman: An American Sacrifice, were removed from the market. Former Chilean Ambassador Nathanial Lewis and two other American officials filed a lawsuit against director Costa Gavras and Universal's parent company MCA, which they lost. After the lawsuit, the film was re-released by Universal in 1996.

The film begins with a statement by Costa Gavras that the events depicted in the film are true. It ends with a disclaimer from the U.S. State department stating that they are fictional. In the first scene, Charles 'Charlie' Horman and an American friend Terry Simon are returning from the seaside town of Viña del Mar in the car of a U.S. Navy Captain Ray Tower, whom they met there. When they get to Santiago, they are hit by the chaos and bloodshed taking place in the streets. People are being interrogated and shot indiscriminately, tanks are rolling through the main streets, soldiers stand at every few metres, bodies crumpled at every corner. Tower drops them off, and they are forced to spend the night in a hotel because of the curfew. Charlie is worried because his wife, Beth (Sissy Spacek), with whom he is living in Santiago, is at home alone and he hasn't been able to contact her. The next morning, he and Terry make it to their home and find Beth alive and well, but worried. Beth and Charlie decide to leave and go back to America in the next few days because of the danger of the situation. That night, Beth doesn't make it home from a friend's house because she is caught out past curfew, which means being shot by roaming soldiers. She hides in a corner until morning. When she gets home, she finds the house ransacked, and Charlie gone.

Thus begins the search for Charlie Horman. His father Edmund (Jack Lemmon), a New York businessman, comes to Chile to look for his son. He finds Beth desperate and frustrated with her fruitless attempts at locating Charlie in the chaos of the coup. In the beginning, he does not understand why she is frustrated; in his bewilderment, he resorts to blaming Beth and Charlie for their unstructured lifestyle in South America, their "sloppy idealism", and their rejection of the capitalist ideals which he embodies as the reason for Charlie's disappearance. But as he begins to deal with the American Embassy, he realizes that Beth's frustration is justified; the Ambassador and his men are seemingly leading Edmund and Beth on a wild-goose chase, insisting that Charlie must be in hiding and that they are doing their best to find him. Assuming that Charlie would have at least contacted either Beth or his parents if he were in hiding, Beth and Edmund begin to realize that he may be dead. But the Chileans wouldn't kill an American citizen...if he had been executed, an American government official must given consent. With this in mind, they search for Charlie everywhere, in hospitals, in morgues, in prisons, in Santiago's main stadium where all the interrogations occur and political prisoners are held, in buildings piled high with the bodies of men and women killed by soldiers. They find no trace of him.

As Beth and Edmund dig deeper, they begin to discover a terrifying and enormously significant secret. Suddenly answers begin to materialize. After talking to Terry Simon, who went to Viña with Charlie, they find out the Charlie had been talking to some U.S. officials who claimed to be Navy men and admitted to being part of the coup. In fact, the coup was planned in Viña by Chilean and American military leaders, together. Automatically considering Charlie an ally because of his nationality, the U.S. officers had divulged everything. Upon his return to Santiago, these same officers had discovered he was journalist who contributed to a leftist newspaper and translated articles for American newspapers. When they realized the danger of the information he held, they had to eliminate him. The horrible truth becomes increasingly clear, however hard Beth and Edmund try to put it from their minds. One day, an American working for the Ford Foundation contacts Edmund Horman and tells him that Charlie was executed three days after the coup, in Santiago's main stadium. Edmund is heartbroken. He storms into the American Embassy and reveals this new information. The Ambassador and his attachés deny any knowledge of this and try to convince Edmund that Charlie has left the country, but Edmund refuses to accept this and demands the truth. The Ambassador admits implicitly that in order to protect American interests and the 'American way of life', the U.S. government has had to do what is necessary. With this, it is time to leave Chile. Beth and Edmund, who have become quite dependent on each other, tie up some last loose ends with the remorseless and petty American Embassy officials and return to New York. Before they leave, Edmund Horman warns them that he will sue them, if it's the last thing he does. Charlie's body is supposed to follow his father and wife a few days later, but a voice-over in the closing scene informs the viewers that his body returned home seven months later, in a condition which made autopsy impossible. It also informs us that Edmund Horman did file a lawsuit against 11 U.S.officials, including Henry Kissinger. The evidence for the lawsuit was labelled 'Secrets of State', and so the suit was dismissed.

Although Chile is never actually named in the film, Viña del Mar and Santiago are, and so it is clear that Chile is the location of the film. And Chile is depicted as hell, as a place of unparalleled violence and bloodshed, as a place brutally and totally ruined by a ruthless quest for power. One mournful Chilean says, "The junta has destroyed in a few weeks everything that was beautiful about this country". In one scene, a beautiful white horse gallops through the burning city streets, chased by a jeep full of shooting soldiers trying to kill it; this scene is a perfect symbol of this destruction. Chile is no longer a place for men. Edmund Horman asks desperately, as gunshots ring out in the streets, "What kind of world is this?". Later he admits that this place has "torn his heart out of him". The Chilean soldiers are the ubiquitous and terrible demons in this hell, murdering innocents in the streets, cold-hearted and cruel behind their hard faces. They are true South American military villains, capable of the utmost destruction. Their victims were once ordinary Latin American citizens; they have become nameless piles of bodies. Shots and explosions punctuate every hour; in the end, they no longer surprise anyone. The Chile in the film is Hell itself.

This hell is partly created by the seemingly eternal U.S. quest for power. The Cold War rhetoric of the film centres mainly around the Ambassador's speech to Edmund Horman. "There are 3000 American firms in Chile," he says, "and we need to protect their interests. We are protecting your interests, too, Mr. Horman. We are preserving the American way of life." He goes on to remind Edmund that were it not for his son's disappearance, he would be sitting at home, oblivious of the events in Chile. The theme of American political manipulation is pervasive throughout the film, and is Gavras' main criticism. Although the Chilean military officers are those shown directly committing the acts of violence, they remain flat and numerous, while the American officials are prominent characters whose shameless lies and remorseless disregard for human life evoke the most shock and disgust from the viewers. In all the chaos and suffering, the Americans seem unruffled and slightly amused. And so Latin America is depicted as a place where the United States wants to have the ultimate power, at any cost. The United States can sink to any level, to the level of Pinochet's brutal military government. No problem, as long as American interests are protected. The cost of American manipulation is borne solely by Latin America, whose people die by the masses, whose living citizens live a life of debilitating fear, whose streets are riddled with bullet holes. The U.S. doesn't care if Latin America is completely decimated, as long as they control it.

99 Women

“Behind bars. . . without men!” is the tagline for 99 Women, a campy 1969 women’s prison film, promising steamy lesbian sex scenes from Spanish director Jesus Franco who is known for, well, steamy lesbian sex scenes. However, contemporary reviewers were quite disappointed at the lack of “hotness” that the film provides; indeed, a recent purchaser of the film on Amazon.com demands his money back for this very reason. Given that there was a decent budget and a relatively well-known cast, it seems Franco’s usual audacity in sex scenes was limited to out-of-focus close-ups, much to the chagrin of genre devotees. This chagrin should extend to the ambiguities in the plot and the confusion concerning its cultural and geographical context.

The setting is a castle prison on a jungle island off the coast of Panama. The island is nicknamed "Pleasure Island," the castle “Castillo de la Muerte” (Castle of Death). Three well-endowed convicts, Marie, Helga, and Natalie, arrive to serve their sentences. In their first meeting with the sadistic warden Thelma Diaz (Mercedes McCambridge), they are assigned numbers and told that they no longer have names. Marie is number 99. Suddenly they are plunged into a harsh regime of torture, rape, and abuse. The first night, Natalie, played by Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi, falls ill from the withdrawal symptoms of her heroin use. Although Marie calls the prison guards for help, Natalie is ignored; by morning, she is dead. The next day all the inmates are doing their labour in the work yard when a catfight breaks out between Marie and another beautiful inmate, Zoie. These two are sent to the “punishment room” for discipline, which comes in the form of Governor Santos, the warden of the nearby men’s prison. Despite her initial resistance, after a few slaps from Zoie, Marie subjects herself to a sexual encounter with Zoie and Governor Santos.

A new warden, Leonie Carol (Maria Schell), arrives and tries to improve the prisoners' conditions, but she faces the corrupt team of Diaz and Santos, who undermine her every decision and thus the prisoners' situation only gets worse. Meanwhile, Zoie and Marie are put in the same cell, and continue their absurd love-hate sexual relationship. In a moment of affection they reveal their crimes, and it turns out they have both been falsely convicted. Zoie was a stripper for a lesbian club, but when she tried to leave, the club’s owner threatened her with a gun. Her act of self-defense resulted in the his death, and she was sent to prison. Marie accepted a ride from a stranger, who kidnapped her and gang-raped her with other men. In trying to defend herself, Marie killed one of these men--but no one believed her story at her trial. Warden Diaz says, “This prison is a place for women who have broken the rules of society,” implying some sort of mysterious oppressive society. It never becomes clear where these women come from, and what society’s rules they have broken.

One day, a prisoner from the men’s camp contacts a female prisoner, Rosalie, and helps her to plan an escape. Rosalie, Helga, and Marie conspire together and flee at dawn. They must make their way through a treacherous jungle until they get to the other side of the island, where there is a fishing village and boats they can use to complete their escape. On the way, they meet an escapee from the men’s prison, Ricardo, who helps them hide from the search parties. They spend the night in a cave, where Ricardo and Rosalie sleep together. The next morning, they come across a group of male convicts who are eating in the jungle. When these men see the three scantily clad and sexy women, they go crazy. After killing Ricardo, they proceed to rape and kill Rosalie, while Marie and Helga take flight. These two make it to the fishing village. Ecstatic and exhausted, they run towards the boats and into the sea. Just then, a shot is fired into the air. Behind them is Governor Santos, clad in gray military-wear, and his soldiers. “We’ve been waiting for you all day,” he gloats. Back to the cold, violent Castillo de la Muerte they go. The new warden Carol has given up trying to break the corrupt and cruel prison system, leaving it in the hands of the vicious Warden Diaz and the governor, who promise to make prison existence a living hell for the rest of their days. Marie, Helga, Zoie, and the rest of the inmates are left at their mercy.

The eerie and almost Kafkaesque atmosphere of the film goes beyond the rape scenes and violence and extends to the confusion surrounding the culture and place to which it refers. The island is in Panama, but footage reveals it to be anything but tropical, except in the depiction of the dense jungle. Panama, or even Latin America, seems to show its face in few aspects of the film. Only three of the characters have Latin-sounding names: Ricardo, Thelma Diaz, and Governor Santos. The female inmates all seem to be from Europe or America, but the characters have similar nonspecific accents. The island’s English name contrasts with the prison’s Spanish name. Governor Santos is the only one who gives us much of a clue; his stereotypical military caudillo-type outfit and ruthless, corrupt manner suggest some sort of Central American authoritarian regime. Otherwise, the disappointing lack of clarity of the context converges with the disappointing lack of clarity of the sex scenes.

Alvarez Kelly

Alvarez Kelly (1966) tells of a cattleman whose herd becomes the object of a tug-of-war between Union and Confederate forces during the food-scarce days of the American Civil War. The tale would be unremarkable if not for its eponymous hero, also known as the Irish Señor. In contrast to the other characters, who provide single-minded and unquestioning service to their side of the Civil War, Kelly has a complex and critical relationship to the United States.

Alvarez Kelly is a suave cigar-smoking cowboy who has just finished three months of herding his beef cattle across the prairies to deliver them to Union colonel Albert Steadman. To his dismay, Steadman informs him that he is now to take them by rail to Richmond, Virginia. The men argue, but Steadman points to his contractual obligations to deliver the cattle to the area deemed most urgent. Kelly concedes and takes the steers east, making it clear that he does not give a damn who wins the war, he just wants to collect his pay. We learn that he is making a hefty sum from war profiteering, buying cattle for $2 a head and selling them for $20. But Kelly is not merely a money-grubbing renegade. His intelligent manner of speaking, peppered with sardonic remarks, hint that his motivations are more complex than they appear.

Kelly and Steadman bring the herd to the homestead of the ironically named Southern belle Charity Warwick; ironic because while Steadman praises her for allowing the cattle to graze in the northern pasture, Kelly shrewdly points out that this pasture is the one most in need of fertilizer, proving his conviction that there is a selfish streak in every righteous act. Confederate raiders, abetted by Warwick, rob and kidnap Kelly. However, it is not just his money they want, but his expertise to herd the cattle around the Union lines encircling Richmond to feed hungry Confederate soldiers, expertise that Kelly is loathe to give. Their leader, the mean Tom Rossigner, locks Kelly in jail and even shoots a finger off until Kelly resigns to training his rag-tag Confederate cavalrymen. Eventually the Confederates acquire basic herding skills and the Unionists, though nervous that Kelly will help Rossigner to steal the precious cattle, are confident that their army has Richmond on lockdown.

One day at dawn the Confederates swarm Warwick’s property and, thanks to her tip-offs, deftly round up the Unionists. However, Steadman escapes and is granted a three-hundred strong regiment from the general, which he stations at the only bridge where the cattle-thieves could cross. Rossigner is resigned to defeat, and intends to drown the cattle rather than forfeit them to the Union, until Kelly steps in with a plan to storm the bridge with the massive herd and slip by the Unionists in the ensuing chaos. The plan works, and in the midst of stamping hooves and cannon fire the Confederates reach the other side of the gunpowder-rigged bridge, including Kelly who stalls to rescue a fallen man then dives from the exploding bridge. This final selfless act earns Rossigner’s respect and the men bid each other farewell. Kelly rides off with no cattle, no money, a missing ring finger and a bad reputation with the Union, but the broad smile on his face indicates that he is happy with the outcome.

Alvarez Kelly is a wandering cowboy whose life has been defined by the fracturing of nation-states, both Mexican and American. He already had a hyphenated identity, with Irish heritage and Mexican nationality, but this was further complicated by his violent displacement by the Mexican-American War twenty years ago. Kelly relates that his father was killed defending their Texas home "in the 'Mexican War' I think you call it. We had other names for it: 'Theft of a piece of our country.'" This strong indictment of American foreign policy comes as a surprise in this Civil War action film. Kelly goes on to reveal the roots of his indifference to the Civil War; he sees the soldiers that dismembered Mexico as the same ones that are now divided down Civil War lines, “So I say Alvarez Kelly, take what you can from either side. Small return for your birthright.” In light of this statement, one can see the hypocrisy of the American characters constantly berating Kelly for making a profit on their war; the United States robbed him almost half of his country.

Kelly has a nihilistic approach to life, no doubt attributable to the shifting borders during his youth and the injustice of his loss. At one point he groans: “God deliver me from dedicated men.” For Kelly, the causes that people dedicate themselves to are often self-serving and of limited use. He is not a man who is moved by causes, but rather by instincts. The filmmakers seem to share in this view, portraying neither the Confederacy nor the Union as more righteous, and casting a negative light on those who go to great extremes for personal or political gain. Only an outsider, a Mexican man with no faith in ideology, could serve as such an effective counterpoint to these dedicated generals, scheming damsels, and fanatical colonels.

Bandolero!

Bandolero! opens in Val Verde, Texas. It is 1867. Dee Bishop (Dean Martin) and his nefarious Bishop gang are finally captured, while robbing a bank and killing a man in the process, after a long history of crime and destruction. The town’s sheriff, July Johnson, is hard on crime, and sentences the gang to hang. The day of the hanging is the Bishop gang’s lucky day, because Dee’s long-lost brother Mace (James Stewart) is posing as the hangman and helps them escape. They ride off into the dusty desert, and Mace stays behind to take advantage of the fact that the town is empty after the hullabaloo, robbing the bank of $10,000 and making his own way out of town. The Sheriff and his men also ride out of Val Verde, seeking to hunt the Bishop gang down.

Dee and his gang find Maria Stoner (Raquel Welch), the beautiful young Mexican widow of the man they killed, and her carriage a few miles out of town. They rob the carriage and kidnap her. Suddenly, they are ambushed by the Sheriff’s men and there is a big shootout. The Bishops get away, taking a struggling Maria with them and heading south for the Mexican border. They agree that the deeper they get into Mexico, the safer they are from the Sheriff, whose dogged pursuit is mainly because he is in love with Maria and wants to save her. As the chase continues and the gang makes camp for the first night, the gang members start harassing Maria, but Dee protects her vehemently. Mace joins the gang that night. Though Mace hates Dee’s way of life, he plays the big brother role by constantly helping him out and trying to convince him that he is better than the scum he rides with. Here, we discover more about the beautiful Maria, who reveals that she was “a whore at 13, and [her] family of 12 never went hungry” and that her deceased husband bought her from her tiny Mexican village and brought her to his big ranch in Texas. We also begin to see some chemistry between Maria and Dee.

As the gang reaches Mexico, Maria warns them against entering Bandolero country, a region of lawless bandits who “kill every gringo they find.” It is Sheriff Johnson and his men, however, who are the first to encounter the bandoleros. The bandoleros hide in the rocks, armed with straps of bullets, sombreros, and handlebar moustaches; they drop down onto the men at the back of the Sheriff’s entourage and butcher them with machetes, stealing their clothes and horses. The rest of the Sheriff’s men get away and continue the chase. The Bishops, meanwhile, have found a ghost-town, abandoned by citizens terrorized by the bandoleros, and stop to rest. Dee expresses his love for Maria, who reciprocates. Just then the Sheriff’s men show up and capture the gang, turning the tables. Shortly thereafter, the bandoleros storm into town, shooting wildly into the air, and there is a massive shootout in which many men from all sides die. In the middle of the melee, the evil-looking bandit leader catches sight of Maria and tries to rape her in one of the abandoned houses. In his efforts to save her, Dee is stabbed with a machete. Mace kills the bandolero leader and then is shot. Without leadership, the bandoleros become cowards and ride off. Both Bishop brothers die dramatically, as Maria sobs nearby. The end of the film shows Maria and the Sheriff riding off back to Texas, having buried the dead men.

In Bandolero!, Mexico is a lawless, wild country of rocky deserts and abandoned towns where bandits rule and civilization is apparently absent. For American bad guys, Mexico is a place where they are safe from American law; however, the dangers of Mexico make this safety an illusion. The Mexican bandits are evil-looking, savage men who kill with machetes and shoot crazily into the air when they make their entrance. They force themselves upon women and generally wreak havoc, but when they lose their leader, they run away just as thunderously as they’ve attacked. The Americans, both outlaws and law enforcers, are familiar and comfortable in the harsh desert environment of Mexico because it matches their own; what is missing in Mexico is the law.

Maria’s character shows another aspect of the hard life in Mexico. Her story of prostitution at a young age and her purchase by an American for a price of “five cattle and one gun” is a heartbreaking one, but she tells it with a hard face and a hard heart. She says her father became “the richest man in the village” after she was sold, and that her life in Texas was easier than in Mexico; she was treated well by her husband. She is returning to her home country for the first time since she was bought, and there is no evident connection between her and her “compadres”; she is a fine and beautiful woman while they are a bunch of violent animals. Her softness and vulnerability show through in her sudden love for Dee, who also becomes softer in Mexico, repenting for his life of crime and making plans for a better future. Alas, these plans are not to be realized. Dee and his brother die in the dusty, lawless, and lonely place that is Mexico.

Burn!

The concept of "freedom" is often associated with Latin American history because of the initial conditions of oppression and control of the New World by the colonial European nations. The independence of Latin American countries is portrayed as violent and destructive, and is therefore so glorified. However, the "freedom" of Latin America thereafter remained imperfect, as the manipulation and exploitation of politics and economics in the region by imperialist powers continued. The image of Latin America’s history continues to be characterized by imperialism and violence.

These themes are central in Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1969 film Burn!, set on the appropriately named Caribbean island of Queimada, a Portuguese colony. This island’s lucrative sugar plantations are the desire of the British government, and in order to procure them they have sent the cynical and unscrupulous secret agent Sir William Walker, played by Marlon Brando with an English accent, to weaken Portuguese control of island and secure a British trade monopoly. He will do this in three devious steps: first, he will trick the African slaves into a revolt and get rid of Portugal; second, he will grab the sugar trade for England; and third, he will crush the fleeting freedom of the slaves and return them to their servitude.

The first step of his plan begins with Walker’s selection of José Dolores, a lowly black porter, as the revolutionary leader of the slave revolt. Walker chooses Dolores because of his anger against the colonizers; it is only with the driving force of anger that a revolutionary leader is made. Walker orchestrates the revolt by mobilizing and arming the black slaves under Dolores until they are strong and destroy the Portuguese power structure on the island. Walker continues as the puppet-master, placing Teddy Sanchez, a local member of the white ruling bourgeoisie, as the head of the provisional government. Dolores, now the great revolutionary general, demands power and Sanchez hands the government over to him. However, attempts at creating a constitution between the white elites and José Dolores’ blacks fail because the blacks are uneducated and cannot run the country without the whites; in response, Dolores returns the government to Sanchez and goes back to the plantations to cut sugar, this time as a worker instead of a slave. Walker succeeds in procuring a trade monopoly for Britain with Sanchez’ government and returns to England.

Ten years pass, in which the blacks continue to suffer misery and powerlessness as workers on the plantations. Action is taken by General José Dolores, who returns as a revolutionary leader and sets the island’s main city on fire with his guerillas in a new revolt against the whites. The British government tracks down Walker, who is living in a London slum, and hires him as a military advisor for the British Antilles Sugar Company, whose interests he must protect by putting down the revolt. He must track down and destroy the man he created: Dolores. Walker is confused about the morality of his role, but his main priority is doing well the job he was hired to do. In order to find Dolores, he must destroy all his possible hiding places among the locals and smoke out all his supporters. Walker’s British military expedition proceeds to burn most of the island to the ground, and after immense destruction and massacre, catches Dolores. Walker is now hated by Dolores for his betrayal and manipulation, but he remains sympathetic to the cause of freedom. As he is leaving Queimada, the revolt crushed and control once again in the hands of the English, a black supporter of Dolores stabs Walker to death, taking final revenge.

This movie questions the concept of freedom in the Latin American colonial context. Dolores tells a black soldier who has captured him: "Freedom is something you must take. If the Man gives you freedom, it is not freedom." This statement questions the extent to which Latin Americans are free from the exploitation of imperialism, and portrays the continued manipulation of the colonies by their former colonizers, at the cost of the labouring population. It also portrays the incredible violence and destruction of the environment and population of the colonies that occurred in the name of controlling the valuable resources the Europeans so needed. The last scene focusses on the pain and anger-filled faces of the black locals, who have experienced years of devastation and loss in the name of a freedom they never achieved and seemingly never will.

The Adventurers

The Adventurers is a sprawling (and frankly turgid) three-hour epic detailing the life and times of one "Dax Xenos." We meet young Dax as a young child playing with a dog in idyllic countryside that, we are informed, is the country of "Corteguay, South America" in 1945. The next we know, however, a bullet comes whistling from a nearby hill, the dog has been shot dead, and Dax is running for his life back to the hacienda. So much for childhood innocence.

Corteguay, you see, is caught up in a revolutionary insurrection supported by Dax's father, an otherwise peacable lawyer. But the forces of officialdom, in the person of a Colonel Gutiérrez, are busy conducting reprisals, which involve killing most of Dax's family, having raped the womenfolk, before Dax's wide eyes. The child is infused with the spirit of revenge, as well a certain cynicism towards sexual relations. He eagerly takes the chance to machine-gun some of Gutiérrez's men responsible for the outrage. And later a brief juvenile romance with the revolutionary leader's daughter is somewhat dowsed in cold water when the two watch surreptitiously as two adults cavort naked in the countryside and, in response to the girl's question "What are they doing?" the boy replies "I suppose he's raping her." "Raping?" "He rapes her and she rapes him." "Let's do it," suggests his playmate. "No," Dax sternly replies. "You are too young. And I think I have to kill you afterwards."

For all that the movie may have set out to offer a critique of such cynicism, in fact it never really shakes off the impression that first bad things happen, and then later they happen again. That's just the South American way.

So the revolutionary leader General Rojo naturally enough becomes as tyrannical, or perhaps more so, than the leader he has overthrown. He is more concerned to build opulent palaces than to feed the poor, and he callously sacrifices his former friends on the altar of his own in ambition. In turn he therefore ultimately faces a guerrilla uprising, in which the now adult Dax participates. Almost at the end of the movie, the new young Turk invades the country's radio station and broadcasts to the nation the news that "Corteguay belongs to the Revolution." At which General Rojo, listening to this message in his now ruined throne-room, mutters to himself that "Corteguay will always belong to the Revolution."


In between these opening and closing vignettes of recurrent and inevitable violence, we follow Dax as he grows up far from his native land, in opulent Italy. Here he cavorts with the aristocracy, beds a succession of beautiful rich young women (including for a while as a paid gigolo), and hones his sullen, inexpressive persona. "He just does not feel," as another character says of our unlikeable hero. This, however, is not quite true: Dax is hot on feelings of revenge and (quite possibly also self-)hatred. He's simply less adept at the tenderer side of life.


Europe is little better than Latin America in the movie's cynical portrayal: admittedly, there is are rather fewer massacres or political assassinations, but all the luxury and wealth in the world hardly conceals the coldness of ritual debauchery in which people are either objects for brief sensual gratification or pawns for ambition's advancement. The only likeable character throughout is the Xenos family's faithful old retainer, a buffoon-like figure with the ironic nickname "Fat Cat." He's fat, but not from the profits of aristocratic hauteur, commercial double-dealing, or absolute power. He's the endless second fiddle, the closest thing that Dax has to a conscience.

Perhaps, as the 1960s came to an end, the world really did look as miserable as this film (released in 1970) makes it out to be: superannuated decadence in Europe, superficial gaiety in the USA, and permanent unrest in the periphery. "Dax" may sound like a brand of soap powder, but through him we see only the grubby underbelly of global so-called civilization, and no sense that anything is about to change. Disillusion is all.