Because really, the worse thing you can have is stupid people with guns but since this world is essentially stupid (run by gravity and a giant fireball in the sky in a lifeless airless void full of lights that are dead by the time you see them - really?) then chance and the world favour the stupid as is painfully obvious with how many incompetent f**ks are well- established, well-paid, completely useless to anybody except to people as useless as themselves, and spouting off about how great life is, especially in the presence of or directly to anyone not like them, that is anyone smart enough not to eat s**t and train themselves to smile while doing it, anyone smart enough to hate life and define it as a s**tty miserable existence when it does deserve to be, and anyone decent enough not to stick their complacent compromised false sense of satisfaction in the faces of those less fortunate because they're smart enough to care and not be mean hateful f**ks. Well, actually that's the reason smart people use guns against stupid people so I sort of went off the track there.But maybe in essence that is what this film is all about: How the relativity of guns in a moral sense is licensed by the conformity to what is strong and stable in this world but not necessarily right. I mean, how many homeless people in Canada carry guns even as the system they are a part of allows them to die of starvation, exposure, and general genocide as they are effortlessly replaced by more loyal unquestioning 3rd world work whores with convenient language barriers. I'll bet almost none. No protests there folks? Just big happy uncomprehending smiles, eh? And that's right? But everybody knows that Canada is a dictatorship run by cowards that the rest of the world enables. It's common knowledge.Anyways, this doctor realizes the students he stupidly sent out to these primitive villages that are constantly being reaped and pillaged every year (kind of like me except other people call these involuntary patriotic donations "taxes" and are stupid enough to call it "necessary"and "the law" even when they can't afford to pay them - yea, I'm a minimum wage survivor) have disappeared (do you realize the word "disappeared" has two p's instead of two s' - man that's stupid!)and so he goes on a quest to find out what happened. Everywhere he goes he is told by the remaining survivors, or whoever's there, that the men with guns came and killed everybody or took everybody away.That's about it but it's still a pretty good movie. Somehow John Sayles takes this simplistic theme and makes it seem like goddamned brain surgery and if making boring obvious things seem like interesting giant conspiracies isn't the height of modern cinematic magic then I don't know what is. Actually I don't. So take that under advisement.

Others have said it better, so I'll just second the positive comments.The film is a little uneven in parts, but it's a moving story which will stay with you much longer than some CGI-laden summer confection. The priest's ghost story, for example, would be a powerful short film all on its own.Sayles has a heart and would probably be making movies even if he hadn't managed the relatively modest (in comparison to his talent) success he's achieved so far.-- "There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara

A fascinating story of a doctor who travels through an unnamed South American country in the midst of rebellion, seeking former students, only to find them dead or missing. Sayles is an amazing story teller. He takes a ragtag band of fairly unlikeable people and forces you to fall in love with them. I only wish the film didn't have to have a point. It kinda gets in the way of simply enjoying the atmosphere and characters he's set up.

How many directors would follow up their biggest commercial hit with a political fable with subtitles? An aging doctor travels into the mountains in an unspecified Latin American country and finds that local politics can be murderous. He picks up various passengers on the way: a faithless priest, a guilt-stricken deserter and a world-wise orphan. A political road movie with both chilling and humerous asides, the mechanics and politics are both familiar but the mixture is fresh. Another fine addition to Sayles' increasingly eclectic CV: 8/10.