Through the magic of 3D and IMAX cameras, audiences everywhere can take a mind-blowing trip through one of the seven wonders of the modern world in PANAMA CANAL 3D: A LAND DIVIDED A WORLD UNITED, revealing not only its vast scope, but plunging down into the locks and mechanical operations, boarding the giants sailing the Canal, gliding airborne over the entire country, the Panama railway, exploring by native canoe, discovering the unexpected tropical rain forest beauty and wildlife. The film sweeps from the days when Conquistadores struggled through a water-soaked quagmire to the 19th-Century French canal-digging debacle to the American engineering achievement that revolutionized shipping and tropical medicine. It's also about the visionary present, documenting efforts by Panama to expand the 100-year-old waterway to accommodate post-panamax ships. It concludes with a fusion of old and new Panama, its skyscrapers, its culture, a rising economic nerve of Central America.
Cinematography
Those 3D lock plunges hit different on a five-story screen.
Sound
Morgan Freeman's voice doing literal heavy lifting.
Production
Access to operational canal infrastructure most humans never see.
Director
Keith Melton
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Keith Melton specialized in IMAX 3D spectacle, also lensing 'Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs' — dude loves making big things bigger.
The original 1914 canal handover to Panama in 1999 remains politically sensitive; the film's optimistic framing of Panamanian control was likely diplomatically calculated.
No ratings yet
Sign in to join the discussion — comments are spoiler-gated to your watch progress.
Discussion starters
PA
US
