Panama
Thirty years ago, my mother became a fan of Mel Gibson. Along the way, so did I. Our interests in his work were different, but we both had a respect for him as a performer and filmmaker that lasted throughout the next decade. After the lightning rod that was “The Passion of the Christ,” and how his personal life seemed to spiral from there, my mother’s interest in him waned, and while I still found him an interesting performer, my desire to follow everything he did diminished. Now, he’s leaned into the outside view of himself as a conspiracy theorist and antisemite; has that carried over onto the screen? “Panama” was my first experience watching him on-screen since “The Expendables 3,” and he does the shady, heel turn character very well. It’s not enough to save this movie, though.
“Panama” takes place in 1989, when Noriega was high on America’s consciousness, and a lot of hit lists, including the American government’s. Stark (Gibson’s character) narrates the film (for some reason); he’s a government fixer who enlists Becker (Cole Hauser), a former marine, to help facilitate a secret arms deal with contras in Panama. To do so, Becker must put his grief for his wife aside, and assimilate with power brokers in the fractured country, be they revolutionaries, connected drug dealers (Mauricio Hénao) while also watching out for corrupt military leaders and intelligence officers on both sides. What has he gotten himself into?
The film by director Mark Neveldine (“Gamer,” the “Crank” movies, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”) seems to want to be this seedy political action thriller about a real-life event with some “fiction” thrown in. I wouldn’t be surprised if situations like the one in “Panama” unfolded, but the screenplay by Daniel Adams and William Barber isn’t interested in delving into geo-political manners. It doesn’t seem that interested in delving into Becker’s mindset, either, which raises the question of what the film sets out to accomplish? This is part of why Stark’s narration doesn’t work for me- sure, he’s telling us the story of Becker, but nothing in said story really achieves the depth of character as, say, Gibson’s Riggs, racked with guilt and suicidal tendencies, in “Lethal Weapon.” “Panama” is all surface, and to a certain extent, that’s not surprising given Neveldine’s track record as a director, but given the film’s structure, you’d hope for something with a bit more.
“Panama” perplexes me in a lot of ways. Save for a scene involving motorcycles between Hauser and Hénao that basically boils down to a “prove yourself to me” moment from one character to another, there’s not really any action in this film. The film is interested in setting itself in a volatile political landscape, but doesn’t really say anything about said landscape. I wonder if this film would have worked better with Stark being a more active presence in the film, rather than someone who comes in every once in a while, but that also could have unbalanced the film; that I’m even wondering that gives you an impressive of how disinterested I ended up being in Becker as a character. One thing I will say- it doesn’t really make me miss Mel Gibson as a screen presence. He adds nothing another actor wouldn’t have been able to bring to the table. Maybe it’s a matter of what the script gives him, but it also could be that time has just passed my interest in him as an actor by.
