Yeah, not every movie critic would spend a year on refresher Spanish courses and a week in Panama just to “research” a review on John Cena’s Banana Republic action comedy “Freelance.”

A movie about a Central American country going through an attempted coup, with mineral rights and the rich and the powerful having their way of things going back hundreds of years? Ask Dole why they call them “Banana Republics.”

Panama was going through a fresh round of street protests over a bad mine deal that smacks of corruption, protests that blocked some intersections during my visit, denying access to some museums (which closed) and stirring up tear gas battles some nights.

Good prep for reviewing a John Cena movie about a Latin American “president for life” dictatorship hinging on foreign mercenaries, mineral rights, revolutionaries and “American Intervention.”

Commitment, or as they say in the movie, “embrace the suck.” Not that Panama sucks. Gorgeous country, lovely people, great imperialist canal and what not.