Noriega, prediletto da Dio o mostro

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.

"Noriega: God's Favorite" is a film portraying the life of the notorious dictator of Panama, Tony Noriega. Although it spans only a short span of Noriega's life, namely the time he was at the peak of his power, until his fall and arrest by the Americans, the account gives us a fair idea of the style and deeds of the man.

More specifically, Noriega is portrayed as an absolute despot who despite his claims of being a man of God and a patriot, his deeds reflect the exact opposite: He is a crude womanizer, who takes advice from charlatans and witch-doctors, and whose most important act for his country has been to divert the public funds to his Swiss bank account. Alhtough a completely ludicrous figure who takes every opportunity to make ridicule of himself in public, he is nonetheless utterly ruthless and does not hesitate to crush his opponents with a vengeance.

I cannot judge objectively if this account is historically correct, as I am not an expert in Latin American history. Yet, by what I have read in the past when Noriega was at the headlines, the story seems to be within the boundaries of truth. Bob Hoskins is very good in his role as the dictator, while the other members of the cast are also more than satisfactory. The same applies for the direction as well, which keeps the film rolling smoothly without getting any boring. 7/10.

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.

Those expecting "Noriega: God's Favorite" to be a serious docudrama, biopic, or history lesson will likely be disappointed to find its representation of the reign of Noriega as Panama's evil thug dictator to be an embellished and peculiar mix of tongue-in-cheek drama and dark comedy which is surprisingly sympathetic to the title character. With the Philippines standing in for Panama much better than Hoskins standing in for the squat, pockmarked Noriega, the film goes off tangentially with seemingly little purpose save entertaining. The latter it appears to accomplish well in spite of it's made-for-tv low-budgetness and theatrical execution. Worth a look for those who don't mind filmdom playing with serious matters of history. (B-)

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.