Pubdate: Thu, 02 Nov 2006
Source: Los Angeles Daily News (CA)
Copyright: 2006 Los Angeles Newspaper Group
Contact: http://www.dailynews.com/writealetter
Website: http://www.dailynews.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/246
Author: Bob Strauss, Film Critic
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

'COCAINE': MIAMI'S VICE

Welcome to Miami Vice: The Real World.

MTV-style cutting and camera tricks make you think directors Billy 
Corben and Alfred Spellman are trying to out-Michael Mann the 
original "Vice" show for a while. But soon it's clear "Cocaine 
Cowboys" is an alternately jazzed-up/talking-too-much-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.

Only what these guys were addicted to wasn't so much the cocaine they 
trafficked (though some did partake), but the insane amounts of money 
they made doing it.

Native Floridians Corben and Spellman, who made the controversial 
"Raw Deal" about the questions surrounding a university gang-rape 
case, talk to the local operators and pilots 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 officialAdvertisement 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 the trade.

Rather than an Al Pacino "Scarface" type, this movie zeroes in on 
Griselda Blanco, aka La Madrina and 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 orshortchanged by "CC's" third act focus on Blanco and her 
chatty hit man, the incarcerated Jorge "Rivi" Ayala.

With that possibility in mind,We otherwise come out of "Cocaine 
Cowboys" greatly informed about a lot of things. 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 and sometimes consider it your duty. It's a remarkable 
immersion in a world turned morally inside out. And you know what? It 
doesn't look too much unlike the rest of America.

COCAINE COWBOYS Our rating: 3 of 4 stars
(R: violence, drug use, language)
Director: Billy Corben, Alfred Spellman.
Running time: 1 hr. 58 min.
Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West 
Hollywood; University Town Center 6, Irvine.
In a nutshell: Documentary about the South Florida narcotics trade is 
stylish and informative, if perhaps not the whole story.
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