Noriega: God's Favorite

It is hard to find a person who is both extremely evil and at the same time funny. Well Noriega was it. He was basically a walking-parody of every dictator the world has ever known. He was so mad many of the things he said and did were funny (in a black comedy sort of way). He was so evil anyone could write a book out of all the horrors he committed during the years he ruled over Panama. And strangely, his luck ended only after he was finally apprehended.

Usually, movies based in real-life events often fail to be accurate. Well, in this movie, even the uniforms worn by the military were exact replicas of the real thing. And Noriega did have a picture of Hitler in his office. And he did have a statue of the Virgin Mary next to it. And he was a vegetarian. Also a voodoo priest. And the people who tried to overthrow him made the mistake of leaving him alone in his office as the movie shows. Everything you see in this movie happened more or less. The real Noriega said some of the crazy things you can hear in this film. He did the horrors you see in this movie and even more. He survived two coups, Colombian cartels and an American invasion of Panama.

This movie basically has it all. It is a black comedy, a violent drama, and it gives you the chance to get a glimpse of a part of history most people have forgotten. Excellent performance by Bob Hoskins. Lawrence Wright did an excellent job with the script. This movie never fails to entertain, educate and at the same time bring to life a very enigmatic and dark person: Tony Noriega.

When a TV movie premiers on BBC2 (a minority UK channel) after midnight you take it is a read that this is not going to be very good -- and I wasn't proved far wrong. While title lead Bob Hoskins does his admirable best with a tough part for him to play physically the rest is just a tick list of all the events that formed his later life.

Having read up on the subject it is all there, present and correct: Drugs, corruption, the Contra affair and Ollie North, black magic, marriage problems. Not to mention the US invasion of his country of Panama and his hiding out in a church embassy.

However I wouldn't have liked to re-tell the story from what I saw here!

Naturally we are viewing the Third World from a First World perspective (well I am anyway) and that isn't easy. Noriega learnt the rules from others and while a cruel and despotic man, he wasn't a fool. Why -- he questions -- does the USA love drugs so much "does the gringo have no soul?"

(The people who produce/traffic drugs often laugh at the people that consume them -- for them they view the product for what it is, a lucrative poison.)

You'd be hard pushed to get this is all in if you spent a 100 million dollars and spread it over a mini series. This is a 120 minute film and while I don't know the budget from what I see on the screen it is obviously on the low side.

Dictators (let us take the "corrupt" as read) are always filmed in ultra close-up showing their rage and frustration, ready to do anything at anytime (this is why they feature in so many films!), but General Noriega is also shown as a bit of a hen-pecked clown. The boy from the wrong side of the tracks who, with a chip on both shoulders, climbed to the top while -- strangely -- partly controlled by the catholic church and a love of cheap sexual thrills.

(The movie seems to be suggesting some kind of bisexuality that I hadn't heard about before.)

A man who had a love-hate relationship with America and America responding by having a love-hate relationship with him.

While this movie seems to have it all: Power, drugs, corruption, explosions, rise-and fall, it actually has very little. I viewed the whole matter with cold detachment wondering if the Noriega was living in Panama or some kind of private Disneyland.

All-in-all a bit of a failure -- but an extra star of being a brave failure.

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.

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.

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.