Men With Guns
This 1998 film, directed by John Sayles, illustrates the way of life in many third-world countries. It shows that there can be a lack of civilization that seems unimaginable.
The movie follows the travels of Dr. Fuentes (played by Frederico Luppi), a physician with a practice in the capital city of a Central or South American country. (The film was made in Mexico, but the country of location is not stated in the story.) Three years before, Dr. Fuentes trained some medical students to work in the countryside to treat rural poor people. He thought of these students as his legacy for improving the country.
The doctor decided to travel to visit the students to see how they were doing. He heard that there was violence from guerrillas outside of the city, but a military officer who was his patient assured him that these rumors were exaggerated.
One by one, he finds the villages where his former students went to practice. To his horror, many of the villages were in ruins or burned to the ground. His students were killed by "men with guns." Who were these men and what did they want? The nature of the war, and what the goal was, is never clear. The students may have been killed for helping to treat guerrillas or just because some soldiers didn't like them.
The film indicates that in some parts of the world civilization as we know it is almost nonexistent. In those places, might makes right, and men with guns can do whatever they want. The fact that Americans have little understanding of the situation was illustrated by an American couple in the film, who were tourists with no clue about the people around them.
The movie is rated R for violence, and it is in Spanish with subtitles. It is available on video.