Cocaine Cowboys (2006)
Rakontur

Description

The cocaine trade of the 70s and 80s had an indelible impact on contemporary Miami. Smugglers and distributors forever changed a once sleepy retirement community into one of the world's most glamorous hot spots; the epicenter of a $20 billion annual business fed by Colombia's Medellin cartel. By the early 80s, Miami's tripled homicide rate had made it the murder capital of the country, for which a Time cover story dubbed the city "Paradise Lost."

Tags

1970s, 1980s, Florida, USA, Columbia, Drugs, Miami

Collected reviews and ratings

9.0 Amazon user reviews

The documentary covers the flashiest crimes and personalities in the cocaine explosion of the 1980's. Director Billy Corben tells the story of the city built on cocaine via interviews with smugglers, hit men, and dealers. This isn't a socio-political look at the drug trade, rather, it is a down-and-dirty Wild West story, complete with a Godmother who could give Scarface a run for his money.
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8.3 The Onion A.V. Club

Ultimately, Cocaine Cowboys' lesson isn't that crime doesn't pay, but that it maybe pays too well.
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8.0 Variety | Ronnie Scheib

Corben's fondness for shots of sacks of cocaine is matched only by his love for shots of stacks of money, but the facts about the influx of cash speak even more loudly than the images
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7.5 Reel | Tim Knight

Corben vividly captures the freewheeling decadence and lawlessness of the era, when the Cocaine Cowboys seemingly ruled the city streets. While it's a bit haphazardly organized and offers only a cursory analysis of the drug war's impact on the city, Corben's second documentary is ultimately as compelling as any pulp yarn.
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7.5 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

Cocaine Cowboys, which at times seems like it could have been edited by someone on coke, comes at you as a vast bloody river of underworld information, though you may wish you'd gotten to know former trafficker Jon Roberts and former pilot Mickey Munday beyond their bank accounts and apparent obliviousness to danger.
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7.3 DVD Verdict | Katie Herrell

Apparently selling drugs is black and white: Corvettes, Good, Dead Bodies, Bad.) There's not one single scene where drug users are strung out, homeless, or threatening their own mother for cash. Any time cocaine is shown being snorted it's at a pretty-people club. Cocaine Cowboys isn't about the destruction of drugs themselves, it's about the business of trafficking drugs. And that's a messy business—perfect for the screen.
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7.0 Slant Magazine | Nick Schager

Like a narcotics binge, though, Cocaine Cowboys' in-the-moment kicks are, after the lights come up, apt to leave one with something of an ashamed and remorseful hangover.
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7.0 DVD Talk | Phil Bacharach

... your appreciation of Cocaine Cowboys largely depends on whether you're willing to switch off your moral compass for two hours. Don't expect redeeming value here; the flick is several notches shy of blood porn. And help me, but I thought it was a blast.
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7.0 Times Online | Wendy Ide

It says something about the brutal world of 1980s Miami, depicted in lurid detail by the high-octane documentary Cocaine Cowboys, that one of the subjects casually confessed to an unsolved murder during an interview for the film.
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6.0 The Guardian | Andrew Pulver

A documentary examining the Miami drug wars of the early 1980s in exhaustive - and occasionally nauseating - detail.
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5.0 San Francisco Chronicle | G. Allen Johnson

"Cocaine Cowboys" has the attraction of a bad car wreck -- it's so horrible, yet you can't turn away. Do you really want to see a documentary about the Miami drug wars of the 1970s and '80s that basically makes heroes out of former traffickers and a former hit man? This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure.
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4.0 Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

These gentlemen are all capable storytellers, albeit invariably self-serving ones. While the filmmakers clearly got a contact high from hearing all these war stories, most civilians will find a little of this goes a long way.
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4.0 New York Times | Jeanette Catsoulis

Overlong, overexcited and over the top, Billy Corben’s bottom-feeding documentary, “Cocaine Cowboys,” would be more enjoyable if it weren’t so impressed with its subject matter and so devoted to pictures of dead bodies.
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4.0 IGN.com

Cocaine Cowboys is not a romanticized look at the times or the criminals. Cowboys simply presents its subjects as is; if they seem unrepentant or glib about their past crimes then that says more about them than it does the film.
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3.0 filmcritic.com | Chris Barsanti

It's just possible that, some day, America's Most Wanted will make itself a feature-length episode on some larger, multi-criminal subject and release it in theaters. However unlikely and unappetizing that scenario is, it would still end up being vastly more interesting than Billy Corben's documentary Cocaine Cowboys.
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