Three U.S. journalists get too close to one another and their work in 1979 Nicaragua.
Ratings
Curator score: 5.3/10
IMDb: 7.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.45/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 90%
Metacritic: 72
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Roger Spottiswoode
Production
Orion Pictures
Cast
Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Ed Harris, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Richard Masur, Alma Martinez, René Enríquez, Hamilton Camp, Jenny Gago, Eloy Casados, Martin LaSalle, Jorge Zepeda, Holly Palance, Elpidia Carrillo, Ella Laboriel, Enrique Lucero, Jorge Santoyo, Bruno Bichir
Where to watch
Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A gritty, politically charged newsroom-war drama with strong location work, sharp cynicism, and a standout Nick Nolte performance. It can feel a little overstuffed and the romance/character triangle sometimes competes with the political material, but the film’s tension, atmosphere, and moral unease make it worth seeking out.
Best for
fans of 1980s political thrillers
viewers interested in war journalism and foreign correspondents
people who like morally ambiguous, on-the-ground war stories
fans of Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman
viewers who enjoyed tense, location-shot dramas with a cynical edge
Skip if
you want a fast, tightly plotted thriller
you dislike newsroom or journalism-centered stories
you prefer clear-cut political messaging
you need the war action to be the main attraction
Overview
Under Fire is one of those 1980s dramas that feels sturdier than its reputation. It uses the Nicaraguan Revolution not as a backdrop for spectacle, but as a pressure cooker for journalists who are increasingly unable to separate reporting from participation. The result is messy in a way that suits the subject: idealism, vanity, romance, and professional duty all start to blur together.
Worth noting
Nick Nolte gives the film its rough pulse, while Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy add weight and texture around him. The movie is strongest when it leans into field-reporting chaos, political ambiguity, and the uneasy ethics of turning catastrophe into copy. It’s less convincing when it pauses for melodrama, but the overall mood stays sharp and uneasy.
Bottom line
If you like war films that are more about complicity, witness, and the limits of liberal conscience than battlefield heroics, this is an easy recommendation. It has the feel of a serious studio film from an era when mainstream cinema still made room for thorny international politics.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (4★) · 108 likes
Action! - The March of the (3) Rogers: Stop Or Buddy Spottiswoode Will Shoot
A film whose only legacy seems to be the use of one of its songs in the movie Django Unchained, although it's safe to say that probably more than 90% of you reading this didn't even know that the song that plays out during the scene of Django and company entering Candyland was from this movie. I mean, I wasn't aware of it until almost 30… more
Dale Ranger (4★) · 84 likes
Alex: (Talking about Price)“I left this country because of this man. I came back because of this man. Now the cutest couple in town got me looking up a horses ass, on a midnight tour of Managua. What’s going on?”
A very powerful film about journalism and war photographers in Nicaragua during a civil war.
Brutally harsh in painting the picture of war as two people fight to stay alive while taking pictures to deliver the news about what… more
matt lynch (3.5★) · 78 likes
"Maybe we should have killed an American journalist fifty years ago."
Perhaps a little clueless in using the brutal (on both sides) FSLN revolution as the backdrop for the political enlightenment of a bunch of white Western journalists, but on the other hand this particular conflict did a lot to reveal to Americans their government's complicity in such awfulness, about which this displays a lot of deadpan "What'd you expect?" pessimism. It's also tantalizingly doused in good old newsman cynicism,… more
CJ Probst (3.5★) · 56 likes
I’m not going to talk about this film here, which was fine by the way. No, this movie made me want to post a thought on Quentin Tarantino. It has become a cliché accusation to say that Tarantino steals all of his techniques for filmmaking. I should also state that I still love, always have loved and always will love Tarantino’s films because he served as a gateway for my entry into an obsession with cinema. Let’s make that very… more I’m not going to talk about this film here, which was fine by the way. No, this movie made me want to post a thought on Quentin Tarantino. It has become a cliché accusation to say that Tarantino steals all of his techniques for filmmaking. I should also state that I still love, always have loved and always will love Tarantino’s films because he served as a gateway for my entry into an obsession with cinema. Let’s make that very… more
Dennis (4★) · 47 likes
I like you people, but you are sentimental shits! You fall in love with the poets; the poets fall in love with the Marxists; the Marxists fall in love with themselves. The country falls in love with the rhetoric, and in the end we are stuck with tyrants.
I have a knack for films about war journalism because it's such a complex subject and there are different angles that can be used depending on the focus the script chooses.Under… more