Based on the true story of a US customs official who took on one of the biggest drugs cartels in history, this 1980s-set narco-thriller shares rather too much DNA with David O Russell’s American Hustle. Director Brad Furman evokes the period with a grainy, sandblasted look to the cinematography and a saturated colour palette that emphasises tequila and nicotine tones.
Bryan Cranston stars as Robert Mazur, the undercover customs agent who attempts the most complex sting of his life in order to take down part of Pablo Escobar’s network. Posing as money-laundering businessman Bob Musella, with a rookie agent (Diane Kruger) playing his fiancee, Kathy, Mazur befriends Escobar’s lieutenant, Roberto Alcaino. It’s a dynamic that is reminiscent of the genuine but fatally compromised warmth between Christian Bale and Jeremy Renner in Hustle.
Cranston is excellent: we pick up on the barely perceptible flicker of fear in his eyes as he brazenly weaves his story. And Kruger impresses in a crucial supporting role. But the trick with a sting movie is that it should all slot elegantly into place in the final reveal. And for all its gung-ho energy, there’s a cluttered quality to the plotting which means that it doesn’t flow as satisfyingly as it should.
