ianlouisiana Review of Panther

Panther (I) (1995)

You don't have to be paranoid to enjoy this movie but it helps....

[4/10 · 15 March 2009]

Black Panthers never caught on in Britain but I remember some very large black blokes with black T shirts and necklaces made with rifle bullets larging it at a Stones concert in Hyde Park although they were rather upstaged by the Hell's Angels sitting round in large groups biting the heads off chickens.Ah,happy days - unless you happened to be a Rhode Island Red. Possibly because British blacks weren't brought over here by the millions in chains and worked to death in cotton fields they tend to be less militaristic.I would imagine that sort of treatment might cause any minority to look somewhat askance at their former oppressors. Hence "Panther" (1995-Mario van Peebles)a fictionalised account of the founding of a group of Freedom Fighters or Urban Terrorists depending on whether you're in the ghetto looking out or out of the ghetto looking in. So many myths have sprung up in the last forty years that it's virtually impossible to sort out the truth from the propaganda.Certainly many Panthers had had difficult lives,some were criminals happy to hide their criminality under the respectable cloak of "revolution",but many genuinely saw themselves as victims of an unjust social order. Unfortunately much of the sense of history being made that must have suffused the original members of the organisation has been marginalised by Mr van Peebles hysterical polemic.Its simplistic "Two legs bad,four legs good" stance is such that a more sensitive white person than myself might consider it almost racist.As well-balanced as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest,the movie clearly believes it is preaching to the converted.Instead,unforgivably,it comes across as almost a parody of the "blaxploitation" era. Mr van Peebles may well be an angry man,but in over-egging his pudding with "Panther",he has done neither himself nor his subject any favours.