Noriega : L'Élu de Dieu

This story of Noriega is an interesting mix of tragedy and comedy. It tells the story of a human monster who evidently just wanted love. Hoskins is wonderfully adept at capturing the odd combination of evil and humor needed to make such a strange story work.

The film also illustrates the way the US so often shoots itself in the foot by first supporting and then being betrayed by little tin gods -- and also betraying the people that we induce to fight the tin gods. Maybe we will learn the lesson someday, but not yet.

Noriega seems to be, indeed, God's favorite because he gets away with so much and never seems to be terribly scathed. Maybe Noriega is an example of God's sense of humor. If so, he validates the old saying that God works in strange ways -- or, in this case, laughs in strange ways.

The best of the film is the performance of Hoskins as Noriega although the life of the dictator shown here is partially an invention, particularly in the scenes where Noriega does things brutally. The success is that this movies clearly showed who created Noriega, dictator, his links with the Irangate and antisandinistas in Nicaragua, his deal with the drug cartels, and others. The film also tries to indicate some involvement of Noriega in the assassination of Torrijos.

This was a medium low budget, made for cable TV film. The emphasis and framing device are at least different from the usual "biopic". I cannot speak for the veracity of the film, although I do recall a fair amount of this stuff from when it was going on, particularly the invasion. The film glosses over the fact that it took a week or so to get Noriega to surrender from the papal nunciate, and that he negotiated a few small concessions in return. If the film was considered comedic, that largely escaped me. Interesting that johnnyb2000_ seems to think that the film would be more true to events if made by Oliver Stone! But he is correct that no one should try to get their history from a movie. Any movie. Bob Hoskins was odd casting for Noriega, but he seemed incapable of putting in a bad performance. Rosa Blasi was good as well. But overall, I can't really recommend this film.

this movie here about Noriega i have to say is very good, I was born and raised in Panama, and I believe that this movie does not portray the life of Noriega like it really should be, I think that they needed to do a bit more research in order have made a better movie.

The truth is, I have not seen this movie. But I wanted to write something because all the reviews I've seen of this movie so far seem to miss an extremely critical point. This movie is based on a book, which was a fictionalized account of the fall of Noriega, titled "God's Favorite." That book is one of my best-loved reads. It's not at all supposed to be a truthful recounting of the actual events, it's a dark comedy loosely based on fact. If you watch this movie thinking it's serious, I have no doubt you will be disappointed. If you approach this movie knowing it's a comedy, maybe you'll have better luck. Then again, if you still don't like it, maybe try looking up the book sometime. Based on my great experience with the book, I'm looking forward to seeing this movie sometime soon. (I didn't even know there was a movie made until I went hunting for a review of the book to share with friends.)