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Panther builds to a grand conspiracy theory. The film shows the FBI colluding with the Mafia to dump drugs into the ghetto, so as to neuter the Panthers' activism (and, not so incidentally, to trash the lives of poor black Americans). Little, if any, hard evidence exists to support this. Yet whatever the FBI did to undermine the Panthers, there is every indication that the group also carried the seeds of its own destruction. Panther, which ends early in 1968 (after barely the first chapter of the Panthers' story), lacks any sense of the internal war — between moral passion and toxic nihilism — that tore the Panthers apart, paving the way for the suicidal bravado of today's inner-city gang culture. Of course, you could say that the movie, for all its simplicities, is ''educational,'' that it will send a new generation out in search of history. You could also say that it's a whitewash. C+

Originally posted May 05, 1995 Published in issue #273 May 05, 1995 Order article reprints
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