Sayles Again Goes His Own Way With Effective ‘Guns’

When John Sayles was out promoting his critically acclaimed and darn near commercial “Lone Star” a couple of years ago, he was inevitably asked what he intended to do next. He said he was writing a script with a political backdrop set in Latin America, and that it would be in Spanish and Indian dialects, with subtitles, with an all-Latino cast--if someone will pay for it.

Up stepped Sony Pictures Classics, which agreed to buy the rights to North America, England and Latin America. And now here’s the movie, “Men With Guns,” subtitles and all.

Looking at the films he’s chosen to make in the past 10 years--from “Matewan,” about a labor crisis in a 1920s coal town, to “City of Hope,” about big-city corruption, to “The Secret of Roan Inish,” a poetic ode to the myths of the Irish Sea--you can accuse Sayles of self-indulgence but never vanity or greed. He explores subjects that interest him, in novels that he writes with film.

And though he tends to focus on personal relationships within a political context, no two of his movies are alike. “Men With Guns,” as Casey Stengel might have put it, is more unalike than any of them. It spirits us into the mountains and jungles of an unidentified Latin American country, where the recently widowed and ailing Dr. Fuentes (Federico Luppi) has set out on a working vacation to visit the medical students he had trained years before to work with impoverished natives.

It’s a trip that will turn into a mystery, an adventure, a spiritual odyssey and a series of deep personal and political revelations. There’s a war going on out there, between guerrillas and government troops, an endless battle that catches everyone else in the middle, including most of Fuentes’ former students.

“Men With Guns” is a slow-paced trip, with a lot of translated conversation, and Sayles keeps it pure. The actors are said to be speaking in four dialects, and there’s nothing about the film, other than the ill-conceived couple (Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody) used as comic relief, to give away its American origin. Sayles has never been a visual stylist, and his latest film is as straightforward and plot-bound as any of the earlier ones.

The pleasures are in the nuances of the relationships that develop between Fuentes and the three companions he picks up along the way. The first is Conejo (Dan Rivera Gonzalez), a boy without parents, who takes Fuentes to the deserted school ground doubling as the military’s killing field. Next is Domingo (Damian Delgado), an army deserter without a gun or a country. And the third is Padre Portillo (Damian Alcazar), a defrocked priest who’s also lost his faith.

Sayles opens the film with a scene of a native woman telling her young daughter about a city doctor who can heal by touch. He’s a sick man, fighting for his breath in the high mountain air, she says, and as Fuentes’ small party trudges through the jungles, looking for a rumored paradise away from politics and war, the connection becomes clear.

But it’s a weak connection, too facile for the kind of epiphany Sayles has in mind. “Men With Guns” is strong enough on its own. It doesn’t need a higher power.

* MPAA rating: R for language and some violent images. Times guidelines: It’s the violence, not the language, that makes it inappropriate for young people.

‘Men With Guns’

Federico Luppi: Dr. Fuentes

Damian Delgado: Domingo, the soldier

Dan Rivera Gonzalez: Conejo, the boy

Tania Crus: Graciela, the mute girl

Damian Alcazar: Padre Portillo, the priest

Mandy Patinkin: Andrew

Kathryn Grody: Harriet

A Sony Pictures Classics Release. Lexington Road Productions and Clear Blue Sky Productions in association with the Independent Film Channel and Anarchists’ Convention. Written, directed and edited by John Sayles. Producers R. Paul Miller, Maggie Renzi. Executive producers Jody Patton, Lou Gonda, John Sloss. Director of photography Slawomir Idziak. Production designer Felipe Fernandez Del Paso. Costume designer Mayes C. Rubeo. Music Mason Daring. Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.

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* In selected theaters around Southern California.