Salvador (1986)

Based on a real photographer: James Woods plays Richard Boyle, the photojournalist who co-wrote the script with Oliver Stone, and John Savage's John Cassady is based on photographer John Hoagland. Stone's 1986 film is rough, angry and often uncomfortable, following a burned-out Boyle into El Salvador's civil war in 1980. Woods's frantic, Oscar-nominated performance makes him hard to like, which is the point: this is a portrait of a photographer as hustler and witness at once. Cassady, who is killed in the crossfire, gives the film its most haunting thread about what chasing the combat picture can cost.