4.5 stars. Rated R, for strong violence, profanity, sexual candor and drug content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.15.16
Truth isn’t merely stranger than
fiction; it’s also a lot scarier.
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| When the undercover Bob Mazur (Bryan Cranston, right) finally gains an audience with Colombian drug cartel overlords, he's surprised to discover that he first must pass some sort of dangerous "initiation" overseen by Rudy Ambrecht (Carsten Hayes, left). |
U.S. Customs operative Robert
“Bob” Mazur spent years as a deep undercover agent in the 1980s, climactically
building an identity as a high-level money launderer for senior members of
several Colombian drug cartels. The operation ultimately led to one of the
largest busts in U.S. history: 100 drug traffickers and money launderers
arrested, along with the seizure of 3,200 pounds of cocaine and roughly $100
million in cash and assets.
Perhaps more dramatically, it
brought about the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, at
the time the world’s seventh largest privately held financial institution, with
assets of $20 billion. It also was one of the world’s largest money-laundering
banks.
Remember BCCI? Anybody involved
with the banking industry recalls full well how transaction reporting
regulations changed, almost overnight, in the wake of this scandal.
Mazur detailed his experiences in
a riveting 2009 memoir, The Infiltrator:
My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel.
That book, in turn, has been transformed into an equally compelling film by
director Brad Furman. Screenwriter Ellen Sue Brown’s adaptation is by turns
fascinating, suspenseful, terrifying and even mordantly amusing.
The film gets additional dramatic
heft from star Bryan Cranston’s impressively nuanced portrayal of Mazur: a
performance of delicate subtlety that becomes more persuasive as the narrative
moves from one jaw-dropping incident to the next.
And while it’s true that Cranston
commands the screen, he has equally superb support from all of the impeccably
selected co-stars. This is another film that lends weight to the call for
giving casting directors their own Academy Award category, because Gail Stevens
found just the right individual for every part.
Perhaps more than anything else,
this is a very nervous film. Despite
knowing full well that Mazur will survive these events, the suspense is no less
intense; plenty of sidebar individuals are vulnerable at every turn, and we’ve
ample evidence throughout, of the cold-blooded ferocity of cartel shot-callers.
