Cocaine Cowboys

Life was good in Miami in the 70s. You could blow into town with $500 dollars in your pocket, and the next things you know, you are burying millions in your bag yard, driving the hottest cars, have two or three cigarette boats, a string of race horse, and land all the way up to horse country in Marion County. You didn't think twice about dropping $20,000 on food and drink because you had so much. The Miami skyline was booming with two dozen construction cranes operating, cars were selling like hotcakes, and there was no trace of the recession that was occurring elsewhere in the US.

But, then came the 80s and there were 100,000 illegal Colombians in Miami and Castro had just flushed Cuba's toilet and dumped his criminals into the city in the Mariel boat lift. War began between the drug dealers on these two sides, and it came to the attention of Reagan and Bush that there was a problem in Miami that affected the whole country.

Long before I got attracted to Carl Hiaasen's fiction, I was reading his columns from the Miami Herald. Forget Scarface, this was the real thing. Shootouts with shotguns and automatic weapons on the streets in broad daylight. Miami had become Dodge City and Chicago during Prohibition to the tenth power.

This is the story of those two decades in Miami and the results today - a booming international city built on cocaine. The truth really is more exciting than what you see on Miami Vice.

Although I had the opportunity to see the unfinished version of what is sure to be an award-winning film, I was thoroughly impressed by Cocaine Cowboys. Without giving anything away, let me just say that this film refrains from the type of overly preachy or overly glorified view of the cocaine business in the late 1970's and 1980's. A nice balance of character analysis mixed with an abundance of archival data kept my interest throughout the experience...and I walked out of the theater feeling as though I really learned a great deal, not only about historical occurrences, and their impact on a few central characters or society as a whole; rather, I left the cinema with a grasp of the time period from many different perspectives: Columbian drug lords, Cocaine transporters and dealers, special task force members assigned to find the aforementioned groups, local media then and now, land developers, vacationers, car salesmen, and your average Miamian. Perspectives offered were not limited in scope. I highly recommend this film.

Anyone familiar with the story of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel will know how the mass manufacturing and distribution of cocaine turned Colombia into a war zone, with top politicians and judges routinely assassinated, and gang wars spilling violence onto the streets on a daily basis. Billy Corben's documentary Cocaine Cowboys focuses on the effect the most fashionable drug of the 80s had on Miami, which was the main entry point for masses of imported cocaine. Soon enough, the city once seen as the holiday spot for retired old folks was turned into the richest place in the world, with luxury car dealerships and expensive jewellery shops popping up all over, and of course, lots and lots of banks. The sudden boom was all down to cocaine consumption, and this came with a heavy price.

Corben tells the story using a variety of interviews, news reports, archive footage and photographs, lending a voice to everyone from smugglers, enforcers, politicians and law enforcement. The most fascinating insight is given by pilots Jon Roberts and Mickey Munday, who decided to get into the drug trade early on, making an unfathomable fortune in the process. They offer entertaining anecdotes about their experiences, and were making so much money that they lived in little fear of getting caught, even buying their own airports to import the goods in complete secrecy. Roberts and Munday were just regular guys who never dreamed that they could ever become so wealthy, and made sure to enjoy the high-life while it lasted. The main threat came from the cartel itself, which was so powerful and far-reaching that one foot out of line and you were dead, often by way of horrific torture.

The film's final third focuses heavily on the 'Cocaine Wars' that became so out-of-hand and brazen that it led to military intervention. This segment is told through the recollections of the deceptively charming inmate Jorge 'Rivi' Ayala, a former hit-man for crime family matriarch Griselda Blanco - known as the 'Godmother' - a woman capable of unspeakable cruelty and brutality. If she didn't like your face, you were a goner, and often entire families, including young children, were wiped out in order to leave no witnesses. It's a mind-blowing tale of how one drug can have such a devastating effect on a country, and it's told in a fast-paced, almost coked-up fashion, with the clever use of subtle animation to make stills feel alive, and a wealth of shocking and revealing archive footage to paint a clear picture of a city in crisis. A 'Reloaded' edition was released in 2014, which adds over 30 minutes of footage and provides updates on some of the subjects. I've seen both, and the original, shorter version tells a much tighter story.

Cocaine Cowboys is a great movie. A must see for sure. Never has a viewer gotten to experience the real cocaine world until now. Interviews with a top hit-man/enforcer, a pioneer pilot, kingpin, and tons of stock footage make this film completely unique.

The sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2 - Hustlin With The Godmother,is going to be even better. It focuses around Griselda Blanco, Rivi (the enforcer/hit-man) and a character named Charles Cosby. There is an advance screening June 20, 2008 at the CineVegas Film Festival and this time around the documentary has worldwide distribution checkout www.charlescosby.com for some pictures of Griselda Blanco and Charles Cosby.

I never could have guessed how intricate the cocaine industry was at this time. I was born post the cocaine era so I did not know how incredibly different the laws were during that time. This documentary gives so much insight into this high-speed world of drugs. I loved how the director allowed the members involved to tell their stories; however I wish that he had let them tell all of their stories & it was kind of jumpy when moving a narration when moving from one involved member to another would help the transition to be better understood. But now I'm hooked I wished that some of the involved members had not passed away because I have got to know more the system was so complex I want to know how it all works.