The term “narco” is derived from the culture of violent crime that grew out of Latin American drug cartels. As the U.S. cocaine and crack epidemics exploded in the 1980s and the government declared a “War on Drugs,” filmmakers began to train their eyes on those cartels, depicting the crime, tragedy and corruption that they left in their wake.
‘Scarface’ (1983)
Director Brian De Palma’s ”Scarface” stars Al Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban drug boss in 1980s Miami. Pacino doesn’t so much chew scenery as gorge himself on it, turning in a memorably silly performance. Tony arrives as a refugee from Cuba and begins working for Miami drug lord Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), later poaching Frank’s wife, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer).
As Tony forges an alliance with Bolivian cartel boss Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar) to outflank Frank, the FBI closes in and threatens Tony’s empire. “What is original about this movie is the attention it gives to how little Montana enjoys” his violent life as a drug lord, said Roger Ebert when the film first came out. The movie is “willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human.” (Netflix)
‘Traffic’ (2000)
Prolific director Stephen Soderbergh is one of the few high-profile filmmakers who is genuinely untethered to any specific genre. A quarter century ago, he helmed “Traffic,” a sweeping look at the disastrous War on Drugs from multiple perspectives.
They include that of Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), a judge tapped to be the country’s “drug czar” and his substance-abusing teenaged daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen), as well as Mexican policeman Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) who is working to take down corrupt general Arturo Salazar (Tomas Milian). The “interlocking pieces” of the script “not only give a systemic overview of the ‘war on drugs’ but feed into a damning thesis on its failures,” said The Guardian. (Netflix)
‘Blow’ (2001)
Just before Hollywood’s Villain Industrial Complex relocated to the Middle East after 9/11, Mexican cartels got another long look as the country’s enemy du jour in Ted Demme’s goofy and often funny “Blow,” based on the real-life story of drug kingpin George Jung (Johnny Depp). The story begins in 1968 when George moves from Massachusetts to Manhattan Beach, California, where he enlists a group of flight attendants led by Barbara (Franka Potente) in a drug-smuggling operation along with his friends Tuna (Ethan Suplee) and Derek (Paul Reubens), eventually getting involved with Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis) and his Medellín Cartel. The “breezily nonjudgmental” movie is less about drugs and “really about money and the fabulous set and costume design opportunities it can buy,” said A.O. Scott at The New York Times. (Netflix)
‘No Country For Old Men’ (2007)
Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across a drug deal gone wrong in the Texas desert, absconding with $2 million in cash from a group of murdered men. Moss and his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), are then pursued by Mexican cartel enforcers, as well as the mysterious and relentless assassin Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Woody Harrelson is Carson Wells, a cop working the case of the dead men. Based on Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling novel, directors Joel and Ethan Coen’s “literate meditation” about “America’s bloodlust for the easy fix” is a movie that “carries in its bones the virus of what we’ve become,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Paramount+)
‘Sicario’ (2015)
Director Denis Villeneuve is best known today for his work on the critically acclaimed “Dune” films, but his filmmaking has spanned many genres, including 2015’s harrowing drug epic “Sicario.” Emily Blunt is Agent Kate Macer, who after surviving a bloody raid on a Sonora Cartel safe house in the film’s jaw-dropper of an opening, joins a task force led by CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) as they attempt to take down cartel leader Manuel Diaz (Bernardo Saracino). The film is “not for the weak of stomach, nor for those who want everything to be wrapped up nice in a little bow,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. Instead it “creates a sense of unease and ceaseless danger that digs under the viewer’s skin.” (Peacock)
Cartels from hell and the greasy underside of the international drug trade
