Under Fire (1983)

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Movie
German title Under Fire ,
also: Under Fire
Original title Under fire
Country of production United States
original language English , Spanish
Publishing year 1983
length 128 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Roger Spottiswoode
script Clayton Frohman
Ron Shelton
production Jonathan T. Taplin
music Jerry Goldsmith
camera John Alcott
cut Mark Conte ,
John Bloom
occupation

Under Fire (Alternative title: Unter Feuer ) is an American political thriller directed by Roger Spottiswoode from 1983 . The plot is based very closely on the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua , in which the left-wing Sandinista liberation movement overthrew the dictator Somoza , who had long been supported by the US .

The main character, the successful American photo reporter Russell Price ( Nick Nolte ), claims to be a professional, neutral observer. When he reports from Nicaragua during the violent Sandinista revolution, however, he is increasingly involved in the conflict against his will and his life is in danger himself. Eventually, he realizes that his seemingly neutral stance has become meaningless against the backdrop of the atrocities committed by the Somoza government. He throws his professional ethos overboard and intervenes in favor of the revolutionaries by forging an important photo. At the end of the film, his images of the murder of a friend by government soldiers help to expose the dictator as a liar shortly before his abdication.

Under Fire is often referred to as Spottiswoode's best and most serious film; it received critical and public acclaim and was a commercial success internationally. In the United States, which was then under President Ronald Reagan a strictly anti-Communist policies implemented, he was, however, mainly because of his attitude prosandinistischen the critically panned and financially a failure.

action

Africa, late 1970s: The photo reporter Russell Price wants to take neutral pictures of a civil war in Chad and meets his old friend Oates, a cynical US mercenary , among the rebels . He complains that this is a "shitty war" and that payment, food and equipment leave a lot to be desired. He was thinking of going to Latin America , because there was still good work for him. Price then explains to the astonished mercenary that the truck they are both riding on does not belong to the government troops and that the mercenary mistakenly ended up with the rebels.

Nicaragua , summer 1979: The conflict between the government forces of the US-backed dictator Somoza and the left Sandinistas under their leader Comandante Rafael is noticeably intensifying. Price travels to the capital Managua to document the conflict, which he expects to be a good story.

As soon as he arrived, he witnessed an attack on a CIA agent. Price tries to counter the civil war with the naive neutrality of a professional photojournalist ("I'm not on either side, I just take pictures"). Parallel to the main plot, the developing love affair between Russell and his colleague Claire, who was previously with his best friend Alex Grazier, is described, which causes some conflicts.

In Nicaragua he meets the US mercenary Oates again, who is enthusiastic about his new job. Good pay, light work, and good US equipment. The mercenary is about to load a truck with suspects. He gives Russell to understand that this will be their last trip .

Russell is particularly impressed by the character of Comandante Rafael, the charismatic leader of the rebels. With the help of his now good contacts, he tries to arrange an interview with Rafael. Alex's interpreter, who was initially also on site as a commentator for US television, helps with her contacts and enables Price to meet Rafael. After a seemingly endless drive through the jungle, when Price arrived at the rebels' hiding place, he discovered that Rafael is already dead - he was killed in a gun battle a few days earlier by dictator Somoza's troops.

While the disappointed Price wants to leave immediately, the rebels ask him energetically to arrange a recording that shows Rafael alive. Background to this request: If the United States is convinced that Rafael was killed by Somoza's forces, a previously withheld large arms delivery to Somoza will be authorized; at the same time, the rebels would give up hope. Price now has to decide whether he will refuse the request and thus indirectly support the Somoza troops or whether he will side with the rebels by staging the desired photo. Realizing that a neutral stance in this civil war is impossible, he decides to support the rebels by apparently bringing the dead Rafael back to life with the help of his camera. To do this, his body is draped on a chair between other men and a newspaper with the officially announced death notice on the cover is handed to her. The picture is in all the newspapers the next day, and the US arms delivery to Somoza has been stopped for the time being.

Price is now getting more and more into the vortex of events. Shortly after his return from the rebel base, he discovered that some of the rebels, but also completely bystanders whom he had photographed on his trip, had been identified and killed with the help of the photos he had taken. Oates, who is actively involved in these shootings, makes it clear to him that he would also shoot him if he appeared in one of these photos. Finally, Russell recognizes that the seedy French intelligence officer Marcel Jazy since Russell's arrival hiding of his pictures that he in his hotel room developed , to identify resisters abused. This realization completely shatters his self-image as a “neutral observer”.

Shortly thereafter, Price and his friend Alex Grazier run into a roadblock from the government forces. Although Grazier is unarmed and can identify himself as a reporter, the soldiers shoot him. Price photographed the murder by accident, managed to escape and was hunted by the government troops. He manages to shake off his pursuers and pass the film with the recordings of the fatal shots to a television station. This brings the pictures after Somoza had previously regretted the death of the US journalist Grazier at a press conference and accused the rebels of murder. Thus, the pictures of Price contributed to the investigation of the murder of Grazier and exposed Somoza as a liar.

At around the same time, Somoza realizes that he could no longer win the conflict in Nicaragua and flees to the United States to find asylum there. Price and Claire witness the rebel victory celebration in which Oates, unrecognized, is there, with the intention of leaving the country at the earliest opportunity to fight elsewhere, probably in Thailand.

Price leaves the country delighted that he contributed to the overthrow of Somoza.

background

In Under Fire , the protagonists (as in the thematically similar films Salvador , Missing and A Year in Hell ) are journalists and photo reporters who give up their initially aloof attitude and take sides. Roger Spottiswoode, who had previously worked as a film editor for Sam Peckinpah, among others , took a committed position against the US government's Central America policy with this film (see Kirkpatrick and Reagan Doctrine ). The theme, script and cast made Under Fire an international success. Spottiswoode on the choice of topic: “Independently of each other, directors from different nations shoot more or less the same topic. Why? Because they sense that there is something in the air. Far away, in the world's trouble spots, things are happening that pose a certain threat to all people in the long term. ” (Quote from: Horst Schäfer / Wolfgang Schwarzer: From 'Che' to 'Z'. Political thriller im Kino . Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 329)

The real role model for the character of Russell Price was Matthew Naythons, a photojournalist in Nicaragua during the civil war and a consultant for the filming of Under Fire . The murder of Alex Grazier, which the Somoza regime tries to impose on the Sandinista, which Russell refutes through photos, is also based on a real case: the ABC reporter Bill Stewart was shot in Nicaragua in 1979. His colleague Jack Clark had filmed the murder and was able to prove that it was not Sandinista as claimed, but National Guards who were the murderers.

While the film was being made, the US government, which had long supported Somoza and viewed the new socialist Sandinista government as a threat, was already in the process of initiating the counterwar . This had the aim of overthrowing the Sandinista, brought Nicaragua another nine years of civil war from 1981 and cost around 60,000 lives.

Reviews

  • “Director Spottiswoode shot his film cunningly, as if through the peering eye of the photo reporter. Subtle like Russell and courageous step by step, the film changes its mind in the course of the plot and takes sides with the Sandinista. ”(Michael Fischer in: Der Spiegel 47/1983)
  • "Exciting, staged, brilliant journalist story and gripping discourse on the moral responsibility of the reporter as well as manipulation and abuse of power by the news media." ( Film-dienst )
  • “In the guise of a political ripper, the film informs the viewer about Nicaragua, it emotionalises them for the revolution in this country, and at a time when the US government is doing everything it can to overthrow the new regime in Nicaragua. … The strength of Unter Feuer is that the film translates its message into action. In this way he can also impress viewers who are otherwise ... not accessible through political films. ”( Fischer Film Almanach 1984, p. 194 f.)
  • “The exciting political thriller is the best film by director Roger Spottiswoode, whose career shows extreme fluctuations in quality. That's how he shot the horrible Stallone clothes Stop! Or my mommy shoots! or the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies . Although he often later showed himself to be a reliable action director, he never again succeeded in combining an exciting plot with a binding statement. "(Prisma Online)
  • "One of those rare films that manage to combine actual political events and a realistic romance with a meaningful plot." (Leonard Maltin: TV Movies and Video Guide. 1990 edition, p. 1183)

Awards

Similar films

Other films showing journalists' work in extreme political situations include A Year in Hell (1982), The Killing Fields (1984) and Salvador (1986).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi: The Israeli Connection . IB Tauris & Co., 1988 ( limited preview in Google book search).