Men With Guns

Released 1998
Stars Federico Luppi, Dan Rivera Gonzalez, Damian Delgado, Tania Cruz, Damian Alcazar, Mandy Patinkin, Kathryn Grody
Directed by John Sayles

"Men With Guns" tells the story of a doctor in an unnamed Central American country, who makes a trip into the rain forest to visit the young medical students he trained some years earlier. They were supposed to fan out among the Indian villages, fighting tapeworm and other scourges. The doctor has reason to believe many of them have been killed. The doctor's journey is enlarged by John Sayles into an allegory about all countries where men with guns control the daily lives of the people. Some of the men are with the government, some are guerrillas, some are thieves, some are armed to protect themselves, and to the ordinary people it hardly matters: The man with the gun does what he wants, and his reasons are irrelevant--unknown perhaps even to himself.

Summary by Roger Ebert