This is not a fiction film. In fact, it reveals the way the guerrilla movement Tupamaros acted in Uruguay during the 70s. For those young people, it is necessary to remind that this left-wing movement was not a guerrilla in the mountains but an urban one, operating mainly in Montevideo. They used to kill esbirros (nasty policemen and agents) and to make justice against the existing dictatorship whenever it was required. The movement operated in a secret and compartmented way, i.e. many of the members did not know each other, thus avoiding to be eliminated by denunciation. Costa Gavras was able to draw the way Tupamaros acted in Uruguay, and also an important happening of those days, the way the CIA agent Mr. Dan Mitrione (Yves Montand) was killed. In fact this movement was disarticulated once new police agents infiltrated in the movement, and the main leaders were discovered. Mitrione was killed but this did not prevent that another CIA "pinch-hitter" for Mitrione came later to replace the dead man. The film may seem as sympathetic to Tupamaros, partially it might be, but this is rather a subtle critic to their methods than congratulation for what they did.

In an unnamed Latin American country, American government aid agent Philip Michael Santore (Yves Montand) is killed and there is a widespread military crackdown. In flashbacks titled after the days of the week, Philip and others are kidnapped by leftist urban rebels. He is interrogated with evidence of his involvement in torture in Brazil. The aid agency is shown to be a front for American support of right wing military juntas in the region. It gives rise to death squads and repression.

This is an anti-American treatise on its involvement in Latin America. In general, I don't have much issue with that as long as it's good. My biggest issue is that this does seem to be a treatise more than a dramatic story. Quite frankly, the movie reaches its high point or low point with the torture seminar. It is visually horrifying and Orwellian. The movie can never get as high or as low as that point. Instead of a narrative story, it's more a litany of American inspired atrocities. There is some great filmmaking and compelling individual scene. I will never forget the comedy of the military ransacking of the university. There are interesting vignettes throughout this movie.

In Uruguay in the early 1970s, an official of the US Agency for International Development (a group used as a front for training foreign police in counterinsurgency methods) is kidnapped by a group of urban guerrillas. Using his interrogation as a backdrop, the film explores the often brutal consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas.

This film was so incredibly timely, it is a little amazing it was made, and somehow even almost ended up getting played at the Kennedy Center. Not only is it critical of the United States' role in South America (even if fictional names are used),but it was released right in the middle of it. We were still actively pushing regime change through the 1970s... (and the 1980s, though we moved north).