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Drug king Escobar’s rise and fall in ‘Narcos’ on Netflix

5 min read
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President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971, but a decade later, the United States realized that what had taken place so far was a mere skirmish.

A previously obscure Colombian drug trafficker named Pablo Escobar single-handedly escalated the war when he began manufacturing cocaine in a sleepy little city named Medellin. At first, he employed just a single pilot to carry his product to Miami in a puddle-jumper. Once large numbers of Americans got hooked on what writer Jay McInerney called Bolivian Marching Powder, Escobar really started to get creative. The war raged with unimaginable force.

Escobar emerges as a complicated, often enigmatic character at the center of the aptly addictive 10-part series on Netflix called “Narcos,” now available for streaming.

When we first meet him, Escobar (Wagner Moura) is a typical small-town hood with absurdly ambitious dreams who hires a couple of guys to work in a makeshift coke lab in a run-down part of town. Once his business starts to grow, he moves his operation to the Colombian jungle, and begins finding different ways of getting his product into the U.S. – in liquefied form, it fills liquor bottles, even Coca-Cola bottles, or can be molded into small souvenir statues. He even fashions the entire hull of a boat out of cocaine and fiberglass to fool drug-sniffing dogs.

At first, the U.S. underestimates Escobar and the size of his business. Once U.S. officials figure it out, the war is really on, with declarations of intent coming from no less than President Ronald Reagan and the primary proponent of “Just Say No,” first lady Nancy Reagan.

DEA agent Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) and his partner, Javier Pena (Pedro Pascal), are assigned to Bogota to try to contain the burgeoning drug trade. Once Colombia accepts U.S. demands that captured drug dealers can be extradited to the U.S. for trial, the war gets even more dangerous for everyone: DEA agents, the drug lords, their minions, and the various public officials and private citizens who get caught up in the conflict, many by trying to play both sides.

No one can be trusted in Colombia, including the police, the military and even government leaders, especially after Escobar decides to become a politician himself.

The series, created by Chris Brancato, Eric Newman and Carlo Bernard, is enhanced by frequent still photos of the real Pablo Escobar, as well as news footage of the Reagans and others. A good part of the dialogue is in Spanish with English subtitles, which are quite easy to get used to. More important, though, having Latino characters speak Spanish and not absurdly accented English adds yet another layer of credibility to the show.

Brancato’s script is convincing in its depiction of the complicated interrelationships between drug dealers, the Colombian police, military and government, and the antigovernment communist cell known as M-19. All of these elements are enemies some of the time, but allies either when it becomes necessary to reach a common goal, or when enough money changes hands.

Brancato has inserted a subtle but useful subtext of near-comic absurdity in the storytelling, including U.S. retribution against the drug lords when Murphy’s house is broken into and his pet cat, Puff, is slain. Similarly, when the drug lords are exposed for what they are, two of Escobar’s allies, the Ochoa Brothers, hire a professional public relations firm to polish up their image.

Most important to the credibility of Brancato’s script, though, is its murky morality. Who are the real bad guys and who are the real good ones? The U.S. has good reason to declare war on drugs coming out of Colombia, but does that justify attempting to manipulate the country’s politics to ensure the election of leaders beholden to the U.S. and in agreement with U.S. policy?

There’s no question Escobar is a villain, but he is also considered a Colombian Robin Hood for his largesse toward the poor. He is all but lionized by the general population of his country because he is someone who has made it, who has become powerful and rich.

As ruthless as he is toward his enemies, ordering assassinations and executions without hesitation, he is deeply unsettled when one of his allies, Jose Rodriguez Gacha (Luis Guzman), shoots a dog to death.

The contradictions extend to his personal life. He may treat his wife, Tata (Paulina Gaitan), like a saint, but he is also unfaithful to her with various women, including journalist Valeria Velez (Stephanie Sigman).

Virtually every performance is equal to the quality of the script, but Moura is especially compelling as he manipulates the seeming incongruities of Escobar’s character to heighten his aura of unpredictable menace. Holbrook does a good job making Murphy seem like a regular, nondescript guy who frowns on his partner’s sexual escapades and seems more bureaucrat than larger-than-life hero.

Brancato does make one significant misstep by having the entire series heavily narrated by Murphy. Admittedly, the complexity of the story and the shifting allegiances are challenging to keep straight, but the narration is as often tiresome as it is helpful. Heaven knows, there’s more than enough material here to dramatize events, and the reliance on unending chatter often deflates the potential of scenes that otherwise need no explanation beyond what we’re seeing on the screen and hearing from the characters.

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