The Infiltrator (2016)
Directed by Brad Furman
A U.S Customs official uncovers a massive money laundering scheme involving Pablo Escobar.
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What critics say influenced The Infiltrator
Don Johnson had a lot of great moments doing it on “Miami Vice,” and when you think back to the Johnny Depp performances that were still rooted in the real world, certainly one of the highlights was his intricate and mournful work as the undercover cop in “Donnie Brasco.”
But it pales next to a similar scene in "Donnie Brasco," because there's no follow-through, no sense that this agent has been playing a character so long he's beginning to become it.
Ellen Brown Furman ’s screenplay too often plays like an amalgamation of “ Scarface ,” “ Donnie Brasco ,” “ The Departed ” and any number of episodes of “Miami Vice,” and when it seems to begin moving into somewhat more uncharted waters—such as a scene in which Mazur’s real and ersatz wives wind up meeting—nothing comes of it.
Anyone who’s ever seen an undercover crime drama (think Donnie Brasco and The Departed) will recognize just about every in-too-deep beat of The Infiltrator: Mazur’s concern that partner Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) is a loose cannon, their hilariously hard-bitten boss (Amy Ryan, wasted), the near-misses, the strain on Mazur’s home life with wife (Juliet Aubrey) and kids, and the tug of sympathy on Mazur and his fake fiancé (Diane Kruger’s agent Kathy Ertz) for the mark, high-ranking lieutenant Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt).
Of course you have, and who can blame you; you’ve seen this story a million times before, on countless television shows and in films from Donnie Brasco (the gold standard) to Deep Cover to In Too Deep to The Departed to Point Break to Miami Vice (film and television versions).
The picture is entertaining throughout, but it never plumbs the dramatic depths of a film like “Donnie Brasco,” instead remaining content with a lurid surface sheen and a generalized tone of menace and corruption.
None of this is The Infiltrator’s fault, but the film falls down by settling for archetypal characterizations and relationships, and by being generic when it could be—like, say, Martin Scorsese’s Casino—fascinatingly wonky about the ins and outs of the criminal enterprise, the law enforcement effort to take it down, and the politics therein.
You’re bound to be reminded of the likes of other films such as “Donnie Brasco” and “Casino.”
But what to make of the random voodoo ritual murder (never mentioned again), the white-suited cartel goon who seems to have teleported in from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain , or the scene where Mazur rams a waiter’s head through a chocolate cake?
And Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck) has great fun as Mazur's aunt, a mob matron who respects her nephew's law-abiding career choices but would prefer that he join the family business.
Olympia Dukakis ("Moonstruck") adds humor as Bob's Aunt Vicky, recruited to sell her nephew's reach to the Alcainos.
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Instead, he simply juxtaposes scenes of Mazur leaving a PTA meeting to go to a drug sting, films an execution without pretext or postscript, and shows that impressing Escobar’s main distributor, Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), is as easy as flanking Alcaino with Bob’s aunt (Olympia Dukakis) and Kathy’s billowing fur coat—to remind Roberto of his own feisty aunt and that Kathy likes to shop just as much as Alcaino’s wife, Gloria (The Skin I Live In’s Elena Anaya).
The (literally) crazy cartel member Ospina’s (Yul Vazquez) last words to Mazur echo Michael’s final scene with his brother Fredo in The Godfather 2. Fortunately, Cranston expertly maneuvers his way through all the character relationships and interactions – he’s in almost every scene.
Big (Bratt) to befriend and charm, with the aid of our mob boss’s “fiance”, another agent played by Diane Kruger (“Troy”).
What with Cranston’s groundbreaking work on the aforementioned television series, his stage and HBO portrayals of LBJ, his Oscar-nominated turn in “Trumbo,” nifty stuff in “The Lincoln Lawyer” and “Godzilla” and even “Get a Job,” and now his breathtakingly fine performance in this film, has any other actor produced such an impressive body of work over the last seven or eight years?
Director Brad Furman gave us 2011’s “The Lincoln Lawyer,” widely seen as one of the cornerstones of Matthew McConaughey’s career reboot.
Director Brad Furman ("The Lincoln Lawyer," "Runner Runner") creates an air of gritty immediacy to Mazur's story, aided by Joshua Reis' cinematography and note-perfect period details.
Just like with Brad Furman's underrated classic The Lincoln Lawyer, The Infiltrator hits all the rights notes and has stylish editing that pops without going overboard on style or moving too quickly when it comes to its pace.
“ The Infiltrator ,” a sensationally intelligent and exciting true-life thriller directed by Brad Furman (“The Lincoln Lawyer”), offers the answer: Have him play a gentle-souled family-man law enforcer who goes undercover as a money launderer to Pablo Escobar.
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The Infiltrator stands alongside Denis Villeneuve's Sicario and Steven Soderbergh's Traffic as insightful looks at the various ways the drug war has been fought in our country.
The film doesn’t go that deep—if you’re looking for an indictment of the drug war, seek out Traffic or Sicario instead.
Sometimes Brown Furman (the director’s mother) strains for the moral murkiness of Sicario, suggesting America’s culpability in the "war on drugs" through pasted-in dialogue.
I just wish something had been done to make it feel like it's own film (much like "Sicario" did last year with material that was also familiar and similar to previous entries in its genre).