Anchor Bay Entertainment
How far would you go for a pretty face in the crowd? What would you be willing to do for true love? What would you sacrifice for your family? Don’t answer these questions too hastily. Your answers just might surprise you.
Escobar: Paradise Lost paints a perplexing picture of one of Colombia’s most notorious figures in history – infamous cocaine drug lord Pablo Escobar during his last reigning days. Starring Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hutcherson, Brady Corbet, Carlos Bardem, Laura Londono and Micke Moreno, Escobar is the fictionalized tale of a young man named Nick (Nicko) and his personal encounters with Escobar. Nick was just a surfer looking for love along the beautiful beaches of Colombia. When he saw Maria, it was true love at first sight. But then he met her Uncle Pablo, and his world was forever changed.
Escobar: Paradise Lost presents Pablo Escobar in a fascinatingly frightening dual light. Fewer figures in history have commanded such a simultaneous fear and adoration from their subjects. The film explores Escobar’s love of his family, painting him as the quintessential family man. When you’re part of his family, he looks after you – and he looks after you well. You’re privy to the best housing and education a poor country such as Colombia has to offer, as well as admittance to lavish parties. However, that lavish lifestyle comes at a steep price. For no matter how many churches he donates money to or how many soccer fields he builds for his community, it has a hollow feel to it once you realize his cocaine drug trafficking is also responsible for destroying countless other families.
At first, Nick sees what Maria and the rest of the world sees about her uncle. Pablo is extremely persuasive and charismatic, delivering speeches in the town square meant to revive hope in his fellow citizens. You get a sense of how easy it is to believe propaganda, especially among the poor who hope for a better life. However, like many other such exploitive figures throughout history, you begin to slowly see the monster and criminal lurking just beneath the surface of the zealous family man who takes tender moments to horseplay around with his children in a swimming pool or to serenade his wife with a silly love song in front of all of their closest family and friends at a birthday party.
Anchor Bay Entertainment
While attempting to build their surf shack on the public beach, Nick and his brother Dylan experience some trouble with local thugs trying to extort them for money. Once Nick begins dating Maria, he’s taken under Pablo’s protective wing and that’s when Nick begins to notice more of what Pablo is really like underneath that polished surface. Pablo orders his men to hang the thugs upside down and burn them alive. Problem sickeningly solved. Once Nick marries Maria, it becomes disturbingly clear just how involved Pablo is in his niece’s (really, his entire family’s) life. Imagine a scary, gun-toting uncle popping up at your house in the middle of the night to drink beer and watch soccer games loudly on your television because he’s on the lam or being coerced into hiding some of his drug trafficking money in your home so the feds won’t be able to find it. And if he provided said house for you to live in, there’s no way you could refute him even if you desperately wanted to. His thugs for hire would certainly see to that.
Benicio Del Toro is an amazing actor of the highest degree, and he manages another fine performance as Escobar. There are moments when you genuinely like and respect him, and there are other moments when you’re terrified for Josh Hutcherson’s life at his hands. Del Toro portrays Escobar as a haunting, Spanish-speaking Godfather, while Hutcherson capably portrays the naïve doe-eyed Nick caught up in a world of drug trafficking against his knowledge and control. I don’t normally go for action movies, but the love story is what hooked me in. If presented with a similar situation, I’d like to think I could just walk away and look for love somewhere else, but I’m honestly not sure. The quest for true love has suffered many a fool throughout the ages, myself included.
If you’re hungry for more Pablo Escobar escapades after binge-watching the Netflix original series Narcos, I highly recommend you give Escobar: Paradise Lost a chance. And be sure to stick around afterwards for the bonus half-hour documentary – Catching Pablo: The Making of Escobar: Paradise Lost. This documentary provides interviews with the film’s cast and crew, sharing interesting insights about the filming experience, the unique location challenges, the duality of Escobar’s life among his fellow Colombians and the incredible acting performances that radiate through. I believe them when they said shooting this movie was an adventure because watching it was an adventure!
Escobar: Paradise Lost is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Anchor Bay Entertainment provided Hotchka with a DVD for reviewing purposes.
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