Managua

New York stockbroker Paul Gleason (Louis Gossett Jr.) receives a summons from the State Department to go to Nicaragua and claim the body of an old friend, war correspondent Dennis Rice (John Savage), victim of a drunken-biking accident. When he arrives in the capital, Managua, Gleason finds himself stonewalled by authorities, who claim that Rice is already buried. In fact, Gleason is no mere Wall Street executive but an undercover commando and a partner to fellow soldier Rice ever since Vietnam. Rice's mission was to infiltrate the South American drug cartels that use their close ties to Nicaragua's ruling regime of former contras to funnel cocaine into the USA. But reports claim that Rice is still alive and has "gone native" over to the enemy side, and Gleason, dodging bullets, must figure out the truth. Rice did indeed pretend to join the armed drug smugglers, but he's still a good guy, taking names of cartel spies. The problem is his romance with Marta Flores (Assumpta Serna), ex-guerilla and ex-wife of Ramon Barcel (Robert Beltran), resentful chief of Nicaraguan security forces. Barcel has turned the ongoing military maneuvers against the cartels into a personal vendetta against Rice. Gleason finally contacts Rice, whom he helps evacuate via helicopter when the latter is wounded in a jungle firefight. Using Rice's list, Gleason and Marta unmask Barcel's own second-in-command as a traitor, teaching the Nicaraguan officer to leave his mano a mano feuds out of geopolitics.

While there are feeble echoes of CASABLANCA (1942) in MANAGUA'S premise of a love triangle under war conditions in an exotic, lawless province, this torpidly-paced movie was evidently concocted by a quartet of scriptwriters at cross-purposes with each other. While there's a would-be expose of US skullduggery in Central America (briefly embodied by Michael Moriarty, as an alcohol-sodden Washington bureau chief tiredly ordering civilian assassinations), most of the conflict seems to take place between the sheets, and something of a running joke develops about the number of times Gleason walks in on fellow Yankees in coital bliss with the plentiful and willing Latin lasses. The righteous hero himself gets a turn in the sack with the versatile Marta, and actress Serna must follow up this baseless sex scene by mouthing chunks of exposition while lounging in the bathtub. "It's just Managua," someone tells Gleason early on. "...It's the heat and the humidity and all." Even battle scenes set the tone for siesta. The cast slogs solemnly through all the deceit and passion, evidently under the impression they're in another SALVADOR (1986) rather than just a poor telenovela in fatigues. (Violence, profanity, substance abuse, sexual situations, extensive nudity, adult situations.) leave a comment