THE RED HANGAR

In South American history, the date September 10, 1973, is quite ominous. It’s the day before the military coup that topples the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and it’s the day this film begins. Captain Jorge Silva (Nicolás Zárate), who runs a sleepy Air Force Academy, receives an order to transform his outpost into a center for detention of dissidents, immediately. The hooded, bound prisoners start flooding in. Silva finds himself in a dire moral quandary—disobedience followed by severe punishment, or acquiescence in violation of all that is right—and no time to make up his mind. Zárate is magnificent as a principled military man whose poker face belies a maelstrom of emotion as he tries to figure out how a soldier deals with a military that has betrayed its duty and ideals. ~SM