The Darien Gap - 1996 - NTSC - [Brad Anderson] (USA)

Lyn Vaus (Lyn Vaus playing himself) sits on a small bench alongside Boston’s lovely Charles River, takes a slug of Jim Beam, a long drag from his Lucky Strike and casts his jaundiced eye upon the world:

I don’t want to be told I have to commit to anything. I don’t think anyone I know wants that dictated to them. I think everyone I know is looking for something to be committed to. But that word “commitment” – I keep seeing mental institutions. I mean, it is a big word. It’s got a lot of syllables. It has that hard kind of sound at the end of it, like a door slamming – “commit-MENT!”…

So begins the shaggy dog tale The Darien Gap, a deeply personal, richly entertaining account of one man’s search for true love…and giant sloths.

Lyn is broke, homeless, alone – eager to run away from his troubled past and start anew. His sole possession, a video camera, has become his salvation. Or so he thinks. With it he hopes to hitch down the Pan-American Highway to Argentina where he has learned there exists a rare creature, a legendary creature that is so reclusive, so exotic, so… slow, that it surely must have been created for him and him alone to find – the South American Giant Sloth. Lyn figures he can safely get some footage of this thing with his camera, sell it to some tabloid, make a little nest egg for himself…

When Lyn learns about the Darien Gap, a treacherous swamp in Panama that blocks the highway and thereby his escape route to paradise, he is unfazed. He’s gotten over bigger obstacles before, hasn’t he? He’s always been a survivor – just like his father. “When things get shitty, walk away,” his father used to say. And so he will. Just like his father before him. What could possibly stop him running now?

Full Screen
English Audio 2.0

DVD screenshots available here