SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

VideoEmbolism Because really, the worse thing you can have is stupid people with guns but since this world is essentially stupid (run by gravity and a giant fireball in the sky in a lifeless airless void full of lights that are dead by the time you see them - really?) then chance and the world favour the stupid as is painfully obvious with how many incompetent f**ks are well- established, well-paid, completely useless to anybody except to people as useless as themselves, and spouting off about how great life is, especially in the presence of or directly to anyone not like them, that is anyone smart enough not to eat s**t and train themselves to smile while doing it, anyone smart enough to hate life and define it as a s**tty miserable existence when it does deserve to be, and anyone decent enough not to stick their complacent compromised false sense of satisfaction in the faces of those less fortunate because they're smart enough to care and not be mean hateful f**ks. Well, actually that's the reason smart people use guns against stupid people so I sort of went off the track there.But maybe in essence that is what this film is all about: How the relativity of guns in a moral sense is licensed by the conformity to what is strong and stable in this world but not necessarily right. I mean, how many homeless people in Canada carry guns even as the system they are a part of allows them to die of starvation, exposure, and general genocide as they are effortlessly replaced by more loyal unquestioning 3rd world work whores with convenient language barriers. I'll bet almost none. No protests there folks? Just big happy uncomprehending smiles, eh? And that's right? But everybody knows that Canada is a dictatorship run by cowards that the rest of the world enables. It's common knowledge.Anyways, this doctor realizes the students he stupidly sent out to these primitive villages that are constantly being reaped and pillaged every year (kind of like me except other people call these involuntary patriotic donations "taxes" and are stupid enough to call it "necessary"and "the law" even when they can't afford to pay them - yea, I'm a minimum wage survivor) have disappeared (do you realize the word "disappeared" has two p's instead of two s' - man that's stupid!)and so he goes on a quest to find out what happened. Everywhere he goes he is told by the remaining survivors, or whoever's there, that the men with guns came and killed everybody or took everybody away.That's about it but it's still a pretty good movie. Somehow John Sayles takes this simplistic theme and makes it seem like goddamned brain surgery and if making boring obvious things seem like interesting giant conspiracies isn't the height of modern cinematic magic then I don't know what is. Actually I don't. So take that under advisement.

Lee Eisenberg Political issues are a common theme in John Sayles's movies, and "Men with Guns" is one of the most significant. Set in an unnamed Latin American country, Dr. Humberto Fuentes (Federico Luppi) has lived a privileged life and trained his students to tend to people out in the countryside. To be certain, Fuentes has never had any strong political convictions. But when he learns that his students have gotten murdered, he goes to investigate. He learns that the "men with guns" have been indiscriminately murdering the peasant population. The "men with guns" are any people who carry weapons: soldiers, rebels, or otherwise. The point is that to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, there's practically no difference between government troops and rebels.The movie has many qualities that make one forget that it's American-made. Aside from the mostly Latin American cast -- Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody play a pair of American tourists who are completely ignorant of the local culture -- the movie incorporates magical realism into its plot. Also, while most of the dialog is in Spanish, some scenes show people speaking Mayan, Kuna, Nahuatl and Tzotzil. But the movie's basic gist (Dr. Fuentes's eventual search for a village that has escaped the bloodshed) is summed up by a repeated line: "It's good to go where there are no white people." This is definitely one that I recommend.

Joseph Sylvers I saw this film once, on cable, completely unaware of who John Sayles was, and initially unsure if I wanted to watch something which sounded so didactic, but what I found was one of the most compelling dramas I had ever seen. The story follows a wealthy doctor from a lush unnamed city in a fictional South American country(but its filmed in Mexico), on his journey through the country side, as part of his retirement, he is going to first visit those doctors whom he trained that went on to work in poor villages. Out of the comfort of the city comes the violence of rural areas, crimes and horrors perpetrated not by the government or the rebels, but in the eyes of the many villagers who recount the tales, by "The Men With Guns". A journey of disillusionment and story of complacency, action, and meaning, "Men With Guns" is a movie which doesn't seem particularly appealing but which side-winds viewers with it's surprising literate dialog and plotting and lush visuals of South American countryside. Men With Guns is a political allegory that sneaks up on you with it's emotional impact and gripping humanism. I don't normally like to use to the word "moving" when referring to a work of art, because it makes me think of heavy lifting and boxes, but this movie was just, that, and having only seen it once after many years, it still comes back to me, particularly when I hear the daily body counts from any of the numerous war zones, patronized by the night news.

rfalbury Others have said it better, so I'll just second the positive comments.The film is a little uneven in parts, but it's a moving story which will stay with you much longer than some CGI-laden summer confection. The priest's ghost story, for example, would be a powerful short film all on its own.Sayles has a heart and would probably be making movies even if he hadn't managed the relatively modest (in comparison to his talent) success he's achieved so far.-- "There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara