Movie Review: ***Imagining Argentina

I do not usually venture into R rated fare, unless it is for a historical presentation that I feel it is important to see--"Killing Fields," "Schindler's List" etc.  This movie is rated R and I recommend it for me, but not necessarily for others.  I watched it because it deals with a bad time in the history of Argentina--The Dirty War.  It was a bad time, because it pitted the government against the people.
This movie shows some pretty bad stuff, but I think it was worse in real life.  It shows the use of rape, electricity, water and blunt force as means of torture.  It shows throwing someone from a helicopter over the River to drown as a means of death.  It also shows machine gunning people in a group.  I know these things happened.  The government claimed they were fighting terrorists.  In the movie it showed the net extending beyond terrorists.  Emma Thompson and Antonio Banderas play husband and wife, Cecilia and Carlos Rueda.  Cecilia is a journalist, and writes an article about some youth who disappeared.  She herself becomes part of the disappeared as a result.  Carlos looks for her.  He discovers an ability to psychically see what was happened to some of the disappeared.  His business, the theater becomes a target.  People are taken from a church, who are trying to bring to light the disappearances. 
In real life I was told about the people teaching the illiterate being a target as a group.  I met a doctor who had been taken, because he treated someone who had been shot.  Often those taken were young people.  I saw a government out of control, stopping people at random with no cause.  Spying on their own citizens.
I tried to see if people were actually taken from a church, but could not verify this.  However I have heard, through a documentary movie of people being tortured with rape, and thrown from airplanes.  The movie also shows people being tortured during soccer games.  I was there during the World Cup, and heard people were tortured while the torturers listened or watched the matches.
This movie comes to a resolution.  I would not say a happy ending, but a type of resolution.  Those were bad times in Argentina.  They have come out the other side.  Some of the military officers were trialed and sent to life in prison.  However as of 1989 Presidente Menem pardoned those on both sides saying it was time to move on.  As far as the movie goes, Bandera does a good job, Thompson does not have much to act about, she is kidnapped early, and always seen in a beaten down trodden state.  There are others from the theater, one of whom is killed, and their daughter.