Broad Green Pictures
Last year I sung the praises constantly of Sicario and now I’ll do it again. That movie was great, one of the best movies about the drug war I’ve seen. Beautiful cinematography, stellar acting, and hidden messages of real depth. People love to make art about the cartels. Pablo Escobar in particular is a big draw; John Leguizamo is said to be portraying him in an upcoming movie which is a fun coincidence. But drug war movies are popular because they’re dangerous and based on reality.
This movie is about Robert Mazur, an undercover customs agent, who wrote a book about his experiences and even has consulted on movies like Miami Vice. He’s legit and the movie seems to have played a lot of his life mostly straight, based on my research. But is the movie any good?
The Infiltrator comes from director Brad Furman, who I last saw with Runner Runner, which was only good for Ben Affleck and was a far inferior drug movie. In 1986, Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) is considering retiring from his line of work as an undercover agent taking down drug peddlers. But he gets wind of a big deal from fellow agent Emir Abreu (Leguizamo) and Robert goes undercover as a money launderer named Bob Musella.
Bob does a lot of real laundering as they try to get evidence to take down people in the cartel and even the banks that provide the means to launder millions of dollars in drug money. There are a few criminals of varying interest and characterization, but the standouts are foppish sociopath Javier (Yul Vazquez) and Robert Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), a financier high up in the cartel that Bob gets close to.
This is a sort of classic drug heist movie, because Bob is constantly in danger but is also trying to get more evidence. At one point he gets assigned a “fiancee,” Kathy (played by Diane Kruger), to go undercover with him, causing some tension with his actual marriage. The adventure is pretty fun, if simplistic, and it seems like a lot of movies are inspired by this sort of real life story. There are a lot of great actors in tiny roles, like Amy Ryan as the chief, Jason Isaacs as a US attorney, Joseph Gilgun as the delightful Dominic, a former mafioso thug playing Bob’s driver and bodyguard.
Naturally Bryan Cranston is great, but that’s no surprise. Unlike last year’s Trumbo, there’s no Oscar level gesticulations and emotional pandering, just solid character, immersive work. Leguizamo is legitimately a star in the movie, bringing enormous depth to a character who could easily be a caricature, like some are in the film. The movie moves quickly, with pretty good pacing; I didn’t even realize it was two hours long. That’s unusual.
Now, it’s not beautiful or epic like Sicario, this won’t any awards. But although this movie will quickly be forgotten and ignored, I liked it. It’s not bad or particularly great, but had enough strong points to make it feel like not a waste of my time and enough weak points to make me not need to recommend it.
It’s a fun time, but not a must see thriller. In this summer lull before Ghostbusters, Star Trek Beyond, or Suicide Squad, The Infiltrator is going to just slip through the tracks. It’s a well made movie, but not one I will really remember five years from now. Stay for Bryan Cranston, leave if you wonder why an R-rated movie has no nudity or much violence despite being awash with profanity. That’s just the MPAA for you.
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