Thursday
Nov022006
Cocaine Cowboys Review - LA Daily News
Thursday, November 2, 2006 at 7:32AM
'Cocaine Cowboys' exposes Miami's vice
BOB STRAUSS |
11/2/2006
Welcome to "Miami Vice: The Real World."
MTV-style cutting and camera tricks make you think director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman are trying to out-Michael Mann the original "Vice" show for a while. But soon it's clear this is an alternately jazzed-up/talking-heads documentary about the Miami drug trade of the 1970s and '80s.
Things settle down once all the main players are established, and a wealth of information about an extraordinary organized-crime phenomenon is imparted.
And a lot of it is done by the people who were in the thick of it. Those who are still alive to talk, anyway. And rattle on they do, like recovered addicts with more energy than outlets for it.
What these guys were addicted to wasn't so much the cocaine they trafficked but the insane amounts of money they made.
Corben and Spellman talk to the locals who struck the earliest import deals with Colombia's Medellin cartel. They show how the burgeoning illicit business fueled a wider economic boom for the fading tourist town (with attendant official corruption, like one whole police academy class that wound up either dead or in prison). And they go deep into the bloody violence that inevitably took over.
Rather than an Al Pacino "Scarface" type of criminal, this movie zeroes in on Griselda Blanco, aka "The Black Widow," as the most ruthless godmother of the era. She is an amazing character, but it's hard to believe that some equally nasty monsters haven't been overlooked by "Cocaine Cowboys' " focus on Blanco and her chatty hit man.
With that possibility in mind, we otherwise come out of "Cowboys" greatly informed. We learn the best ways to stash tons of product, how to waste vaults full of money and what it feels like to know that you can get away with doing anything to anybody. It's a remarkable immersion in a world turned morally inside out. And it doesn't look too unlike the rest of America.
BOB STRAUSS |
11/2/2006
Welcome to "Miami Vice: The Real World."
MTV-style cutting and camera tricks make you think director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman are trying to out-Michael Mann the original "Vice" show for a while. But soon it's clear this is an alternately jazzed-up/talking-heads documentary about the Miami drug trade of the 1970s and '80s.
Things settle down once all the main players are established, and a wealth of information about an extraordinary organized-crime phenomenon is imparted.
And a lot of it is done by the people who were in the thick of it. Those who are still alive to talk, anyway. And rattle on they do, like recovered addicts with more energy than outlets for it.
What these guys were addicted to wasn't so much the cocaine they trafficked but the insane amounts of money they made.
Corben and Spellman talk to the locals who struck the earliest import deals with Colombia's Medellin cartel. They show how the burgeoning illicit business fueled a wider economic boom for the fading tourist town (with attendant official corruption, like one whole police academy class that wound up either dead or in prison). And they go deep into the bloody violence that inevitably took over.
Rather than an Al Pacino "Scarface" type of criminal, this movie zeroes in on Griselda Blanco, aka "The Black Widow," as the most ruthless godmother of the era. She is an amazing character, but it's hard to believe that some equally nasty monsters haven't been overlooked by "Cocaine Cowboys' " focus on Blanco and her chatty hit man.
With that possibility in mind, we otherwise come out of "Cowboys" greatly informed. We learn the best ways to stash tons of product, how to waste vaults full of money and what it feels like to know that you can get away with doing anything to anybody. It's a remarkable immersion in a world turned morally inside out. And it doesn't look too unlike the rest of America.
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