This movie is better than I had rated it when I saw it upon it's release .
I read the comments prior to viewing it again to get a handle on it and having viewed this movie before I was surprised at the amount of comments calling it a masterpiece. I was not impressed the first go round.
I liked the film more upon second viewing. Ed Harris is riveting and despite a somewhat fractured screenplay and accompanying dialogue he hits scarcely a bad note. The same cannot be said of some of the supporting cast.
However, the job the supporting actors did in establishing personalities for their characters was astounding, a real rogues gallery, probably very similar to the scoundrels who were in Nicaragua in 1855.
It is easy to see that Cox was influenced by Apocalypse Now just as it is easy to see the influence of this movie upon the film Richard III.
This movie is a satire about hypocrisy and capitalism and Cox does a pretty good job of it.