Cocaine Cowboys [DVD]

tom Sullivan had made a lot of money from underworld activities. He rented Andy Warhols Montauk house and used his own cash to finance this semi autobiographical film. The action is at Montauk, Sullivan had never acted before. Jack Palance was the 'name'. Andy Warhol had a cameo role. The fulm was rotten and bombed but as a period piece is fascinating

This is a first class documentary with an easy to follow style which flows naturally and time passes quickly. I'm not a fan of gangster films and I hate violence so I was a little unsure about this documentary but it had me hooked from early on. There is an endless amount of eye-opening and eye-popping information. I became engrossed and I don't even like drugs!

Before seeing this, I recently saw the Panorama programme with Alex James, (the base player with Blur who claimed he blew a £1 million on cocaine), as it followed him on trip around Colombia to see the realities and hidden hardships this drug has caused, and I became interested to know more.

Cocaine Cowboys - the documentary's title - comes from the tagline that was given to the feuding Cuban and primarily Colombian drugs dealers shooting it out on the streets and houses of 1970s to 1980s Miami which made the actions of the Chicago gangsters of the Prohibition era look fairly subdued by comparison.

The film opens with coverage of an execution-style shooting in broad daylight in a liquor store in Miami '79 and asks where will the Cocaine Cowboys strike next? The next ¾ of an hour back tracks in time for us to understand how we got to this stage and does so by concentrating on testimonies of 2 of the central characters of the US cocaine trade; Jon Roberts who distributed over $2 Billion of cocaine for the Medellin Cartels and Mickey Mundey who smuggled over 38 tons of cocaine from Colombia to USA

Both come across as articulate, easy going, even charming people who could've been successful businessmen in any field if fate had been different. Roberts' network was immense reaching through to all levels of the feted of society (the only ones who could afford the drug), whilst Mundey's operational nous was so highly tuned they were able to operate for years without any detection or intervention from the authorities - a bit like a brilliant but warped Bond villain.

But the emphasis all changes with the liquor store murders in '79 and the film starts to reveal the other side of the story, the human cost from the emerging power struggles that were beginning to spiral out of control. Over a 15 year period the average number of cocaine homicides rocketed from 1 per annum to 2 per week.

The film then takes narration from it's 3rd main character, Jorge 'Rivi' Ayala who grew to become the head enforcer of La Madrina (the Godmother) an incredibly despotic and ruthless dealer who controlled the drug trade through fear.

The death tolls of shoot-outs got so bad and so frequent that the media stopped being interested in reporting only double or even triple-murders! They would concentrate on multiple homicides of 5 or 6 or more. Yet no matter how bad the death tolls got, nobody stopped buying cocaine, the demand for it kept growing higher, and kept outstripping supply.

This film shows how money ruined morality; banks, the police, mayors - there was no one that wasn't touched, and if they weren't directly involved in the drug trade they conveniently didn't ask questions like; "why are you buying a $1 million dollar airplane with cash?"

This film covers so much more than I ever imagined, you won't need cocaine to blow your mind, this documentary will do the same thing! Yet it never judges people's actions it just presents them. Nor does it get too gory, there are some strong photos which are shown in context but the camera never lingers.

There are only a few documentaries that have made a big impact on me and this one stands up there with the best of them. The deleted scenes and special featurette are worth watching also for extra insight.

A dark documentary about 70s and 80s cocaine dealers in Miami. A well-researched and interesting insight. This is not usually my kind of film at all, but it kept me entertained and informed throughout. Recommended.