MEN WITH GUNS

Part allegory, part fictionalized expose of real events, John Sayles' latest audacious drama takes place in an unspecified Latin American country. Approaching retirement, the wealthy respected Dr. Humberto Fuentes considers as his foremost achievement the medical-relief program in which he trained young student physicians to go and serve poor villages in the mountains. Now, sensing his own mortality, Dr. Fuentes wants to visit those villages for the first time and behold the good works he has sired. But instead of clinics and charitable deeds, Dr. Fuentes finds only misery and death. In one impoverished settlement after another, he learns that his students were brutally slain, their peasant patients liquidated – all by mysterious “men with guns,” whose deadly visitations seem to correspond with army maneuvers against guerilla rebels in the area. Apolitical and aloof from matters of domestic policy, Dr. Fuentes begins learning oft he death squads and clandestine torture, and it's now more than just a personal matter. Because, whoever they are, the Men with Guns are still around. And even the great Dr. Fuentes can ask too many questions. (In Spanish with English subtitles)