By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 11, 2006; C01

The camera pans the crowd in slo-mo, dancing with a crowd of very young men. They are bare-chested and tattooed, pumped up on testosterone, flashing gang signs, looking joyous. There are women, too, just as young, looking on top of the world, the camera following them through the streets of San Salvador and into a playground's basketball court, eavesdropping as they negotiate the rules of the game.

Can I hold up my hands to my face? A young, ponytailed woman wants to know. Hit back, maybe?

"You can't do anything," another woman informs her. You've just got to take it.

And take it the girl does, as four or five women and one man kick the daylights out of her, 18 kicks in all, to commemorate the name of the gang she is trying to join: the 18th Street gang of San Salvador, the subject of an often mesmerizing documentary, "18 With a Bullet." (The film, written and directed by Ricardo Pollack, airs tonight at 9 on PBS.)

The initiate curls on the ground, flinching but resolute. Her attackers yank her up, pat her on the back, and grin.

"Welcome to the gang!" they tell her.

As openings go, it's a real humdinger, quickly establishing tone and territory. But it's also a bit misleading, because aside from this scene, women are mere extras in the documentary, occasionally seen but rarely heard from, unless it's the weary wife of Slappy, stoic and suffering, telling her murdering, crackhead husband, "I swear to you, this is the last time. . ."

Instead, the filmmakers focus on the compelling men of 18: Slappy, Charlie, Travieso, Duke and their compadres, a baby-faced crew of conflicted souls finding family, solace and structure in each other.

"I love my gang more than my mother," says one gang member whose mother abandoned him to find work in the United States. "When I needed my mother, she wasn't there for me." The gang, however, was.

About that gang: It is an American export, a little example of cross-cultural fertilization gone awry. Many of the gangbangers depicted were born in El Salvador and came with their parents to the States, growing up in Los Angeles, where they formed allegiances with the original 18th Street gang, or MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha), whose presence has been acutely felt in the Washington area.

Gang life leads to trouble with the law, and many of these gangbangers are deported and booted back home. Unmoored and missing family, they re-create their gang in tiny El Salvador. Because of the country's bloody 12-year civil war, there are guns aplenty, and no shortage of bombastic young men eager to use them. Today, the documentary reports, El Salvador has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The cost of gang violence on the tiny nation: $1 billion a year, according to the filmmakers.

"A bunch of homies came through, deported," says Slappy, himself a deportee, "and they still come."

The filmmakers follow these young men through the course of their lives, watching them iron clothes, kiss their babies, extort money from bus drivers, peddle pot, pop in and out of prison. And they managed to obtain incredible access to their subjects: We see Slappy fight with his wife and watch him sob after she leaves him. We watch them discipline each other (18 kicks, counting off each one). We listen in as tearful Travieso begs his absentee mother, who is working as a domestic in the United States, to send for him.

"I don't care that you don't send me money," he tells her, his voice breaking. "I want to be with you."

The next day, we watch him prepping to go out on a kill.

Death is ever-present in their lives: We watch them all crowd around a coffin to sing to a fallen "homeboy," index and middle fingers splayed in the 18th Street sign. Charlie, still a teen, boasts about how he gets to do things most kids his age don't: kill people. Another muses that he'd like to live a long time. He's 17. He'd love to see 37. Maybe even 39.

The filmmakers don't judge their subjects, instead letting us come to our own conclusions about them and their choices. At times, however, this impassivity undercuts the film's power: We don't get to hear from the people the gangbangers terrorize, or witness the grief of the families of the rivals they kill.

Another quibble: The subjects, many of them bilingual, flit back and forth between English and Spanish, and at first, the film keeps up, translating with unobtrusive but skillful subtitles, capturing the flavor of their speech. Then, rather abruptly, the filmmakers abandon the subtitles, dubbing over Spanish speakers' voices with very proper English. The effect is jarring, and for Spanish speakers who'd no doubt prefer to hear the Spanish, profoundly annoying.

Still, "18" makes for powerful watching. We can't help but feel for these young men -- even though if we encountered them on a dark street, we'd want to run in the opposite direction.

Wide Angle: 18 With a Bullet (one hour) debuts tonight at 9 on WMPT (Channel 22) and at 10 on WETA (Channel 26).