Cocaine Cowboys
Length: Single
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Rated: R
Release Date: 2006-12-07
Director: Billy Corben
Music Score: Jan Hammer
WorkNameSort: Cocaine Cowboys
Our Rating: 3.00
With a flat visual style, cheap-looking graphics and music by Jan Hammer, Cocaine Cowboys starts off looking like an episode of City Confidential or some similar A&E crime show. Within the first half-hour, however, the characters in this expertly crafted documentary come alive, as does the true story of the late-’70s explosion of the drug trade in Miami. Whether it’s the ingenious pilot who brought the coke in from Colombia (via Lakeland, of all places), the wily middleman who made millions simply by being a facilitator, or the hard-boiled newswoman fearlessly documenting it all, none of the principals in Cocaine Cowboys would be remotely believable in a piece of fiction, as their stories are so outlandish and their personalities so outsized. Orbiting around a 1979 shootout at the Dadeland Mall ‘ an event that threw into sharp focus exactly how ruthless and omnipresent the drug-dealing culture had become in South Florida ‘ Cocaine Cowboys is a fascinating look at a time when Miami was so flush with cash from cocaine deals that it was completely buffered from a nationwide recession.
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2006.