John
Sayles's Men with Guns is a story of a retired
physician who seeks to learn the result of a project to send
newly trained physicians to the provinces of a Spanish-speaking
country where indigenous peoples live without proper medical
care. What the physician finds, instead of a fulfillment of
the aims of the project, is that everyone is caught up in
a life-and-death struggle between government and guerrilla
forces. Any medical help to villagers is perceived as aiding
either the government or the guerrillas, neither of which
appear to be engaged in heroism. The physician's naïveté is
shattered, and the audience learns that the spiral of violence
is endless unless the public awakens to the reality that indigenous
peoples have a right to life without molestation, yet their
plight is used cynically by guerrillas, who in turn provoke
senseless violence from government forces. MH
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