19th century colonial politics as a thinly veiled critique of US imperialism. Marlon Brando plays a "gentleman adventurer" who's effectively a secret agent tasked with destabilizing countries (named William Walker, based on the historical freebooter William Walker). He's the focal character, but you're made to hate him, especially as he starts espousing an "economic realism" that's all too familiar from a modern context but incredibly fucked up in the context of slavery, racism, colonialism, etc. Those moments give me a feeling like a stone's sinking in my gut. Like, "Oh, this system has not fundamentally changed at all."