“The Condor”: Paved with Good Intentions

“Stan Lee has stated on several occasions that he created The Condor with the intent of fostering a Latino superhero, and the good news is that Tony and Sammi defy the usual Hollywood image of Latino characters as poor, urban, and uneducated. Simply seeing the Valdez family as wealthy industrialists in the suburbs is progress of a sort. Unfortunately, Tony spends most of the movie as a grandstanding, insensitive jerk, and his transformation into a hero is sudden and unconvincing. The Valdez parents aren’t on screen long enough to make much of an impression””the mother is generically pleasant and the fathers only defining trait is the workaholism that has alienated him from his son. Sammi is a little more interesting, but shes straitjacketed by the two truly thankless roles of “technobabble exposition delivery” and “friend secretly pining for someone else who doesn’t know she exists.”

Sadly, once you get past this quartet of main characters, it seems that The Condor never met a stereotype it didnt like. If the Valdez family and Sammi avoid the typical Latino stereotypes, Tonys cousin Reuben more than compensates by having nearly every insulting Latino trait Hollywood has ever thought of. His nemesis Chato is barely sketched out as anything more than the suburban nightmare of a Latino gang leader. “

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