Cocaine Cowboys

What's not to like about mountains of cocaine, even bigger mountains of money, bad-ass drug barons and truck loads of guns? How much fun is Al Pacino's Tony Montana? Billy Corben has all the ingredients here to satisfy our appetite for vicarious living with his exposé of Miami's cocaine boom-and-bust life cycle from the mid 1970s through the mid `80s. His documentary follows the transformation of Miami from a sleepy retirement village in the 60s to the epicentre of a multi-billion drug industry and the murder capital of the '80s to today's corporatized show pony.

Whilst his raw material is fascinating, Corben is not overly effective with it. Partly this is due to the often sub-optimal presentation. Paper cut-outs are not known for their dramatic effect and he often has recourse both to photo-montages and other rather rudimentary and arguably unnecessary ways of illustrating his complex story of who did what to who and with what. The other weakness is that his main talking heads, smugglers Jon Roberts and Mike Munday and enforcer Jorge "Rivi" Ayala (who blithely admits to 11 murders in one day!!) are given a platform to present their stories with little probing. Although detailed enough to serve as a research tool for budding scriptwriters, with its Jan Hammer Miami Vice style soundtrack Cocaine Cowboys has the raciness of an Entertainment Week profile but disappointingly little penetration beyond the photo-journalistic surface. If the film is in essence a familiar live-by-the-sword-die-by-the sword saga, probably the most intruiging point made is in the final summation when it is claimed that the shining paean to squeaky clean consumer capitalism that is Miami today is largely the result of the violent cocaine wars of two decades past. Civilization is, as they say, built on blood-soaked soil.

Corben followed this film up with a 2008 more-of-the-same sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin' With Godmother which followed the drug career of Oakland boy Charles Cosby who became cocaine matriach Griselda Blanco's protégé.

DVD Extras: Hustlin' With The Godmother: The Charles Cosby Story, a feature interview with Cosby, Audio Commentary by Corben with co-producer David Cypkin; Original Theatrical Trailer.

Available from: Madman

 

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