Panama (2022)

Plot of Panama: James Becker is an ex-marine who has descended din to alcoholism after the death of his wife. He is rescued by Stark, an old associate and sent to Panama to negotiate the purchase of a Russian helicopter for use by the Panamanian contras. Once in Panama he takes the job of a strong arm in a casino and associates with a drug dealer who claims to have contacts in all the right places and a leader of the contras who takes him out in the field. He seems to move from one group to another eventually getting control of a vast amount of money in a Swiss bank account and becoming the lover of an exotic beauty, but how will it all pan out?

Content: Some fairly graphic sex with associated female nudity, and quite a lot of other girls with their tops off, plus a lot of drinking. The drug dealer is seldom seen without a glass in his hand. Becker joins the Contras in a hunt for Noriega’s soldiers and shoots people with an AK47. He converses with Stark his boss back in USA. He works in the casino where nothing much happens and talks to a CIA woman who helps him a bit. In the end Stark joins him in Panama for the final negotiation.

A View: 2.6/10 on Rotten Tomatoes – says it all. Like one or two others, I was attracted to this outing by the presence of Mel Gibson, and actually by the director, Mark Neveldine, who with Brian Taylor had made some quite memorable films. But this was a disaster of moderately epic proportions. Nothing really seemed to make any sense. Had the whole thing been a dream, and a teenage boy woken up in his lonely bed, a bit sticky, to face a new day at school, that would have explained it. So not a watch even for nothing, and even if you are a Mel Gibson fan.

Fun Fact: The film was shot in 14 days over three weeks in Puerto Rico