Shit rocked, thanks @JealousCactus for the recommend.

It's a satire about filibuster William Walker, a mercenary who couped Nicaragua in the 1850s on behalf of robber-baron Cornelius Vanderbilt and installed himself as head-of-state.

The joke is he's portrayed as a credulous, unhinged fanatic who, despite his piety and Enlightenment worship, commands a band of deranged hillbilly psychos who approximate the Glanton Gang from Blood Meridian. Reagan's fuckery in Nicaragua is never far from the subtext of any scene, and this becomes more overt as the film progresses.

It's straight enough that if you're not in on the joke it just plays as weird. A lot of the subtle line reads are only funny if you come in knowing Manifest Destiny is a genocidal ideology and those who sought to further it were among history's most psychotic villains despite erudite speech and clothing.

Interestingly this seems to have baffled some critics, which is why it has a 47% Rotten Tomatoes score. Case in point, see Roger Ebert's thumbs-down review. He may be a lib but he's not dumb, but he lets his cognitive dissonance slip a few times here:

He does indeed survive several vicious gunfights, although the movie makes him such a reptilian character that we would shoot him ourselves, if we could.

this movie is apparently intended as a comedy or a satire. I write "apparently" because, if it is a comedy, it has no laughs, and if a satire, no target.

supporting characters read Time, Newsweek and People, and puff on Marlboros. Why? To show that it's all a joke, perhaps, or that today's headlines are the same as yesterday's, or that the press has always had it all wrong about Nicaragua, or that Alex Cox is a clever lad.

Anyone's free to not like the film without having to be accused of "not getting it" of course, but to watch this and not understand what the target of the satire even is is pretty revealing.

Anyhow, great flick, highly recommend. As you were comrades :sankara-salute: