3 out of 4 stars
I tend to forget that we even invaded Panama (such is my luxury as an American), so this film was interesting not only for reminding me, but for also showing how horrifically ridiculous and overkill (literally) the whole thing was, and worse, how unjustified. The narrator describes Panama as practice for the first Gulf War, but the parallels are obviously very strong with the Gulf War that occurred after this film was made, complete with a clueless, kneejerk-patriotic media that didn’t even have the lame 9/11 excuse for failing to see through government rhetoric. It is made clear that the government’s control of what media sees was actually a new thing since Vietnam, but of course, they fail to complain about it directly to us when they are denied access (as they were during the initial bombardment).
The story is largely told through footage of the aftermath (disturbing, to say the least) and a certain amount of talking heads. Most of the “experts” seem fairly level-headed, although I think they would’ve improved their credibility by not including the allegation that the US military was testing space-age laser weapons against the Panamanian people (it’s already a massacre, it doesn’t need to be an X-Files massacre). The composition of the film itself does leave something to be desired; the director uses the cheesiest freeze-frame and wipe effects, puts a lame “TV frame” around US media footage, and dubs rather than subtitles most of the Spanish speech. This film, then, is basically good because of what it tells us and the fact that it makes us look at what happened, giving us less room to brush it off. If, say, you already knew everything about the Panama invasion, the film would hold little value for you.
Source: Rhino VHS
25 May, 12:44 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment