Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded Blu-ray Movie Review

Old Habits Die Hard

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 11, 2014

After premiering at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, Billy Corben's documentary Cocaine Cowboys was picked up by Magnolia Pictures, which released the film according to its usual multi-platform strategy in theaters, on-demand and on DVD. The film's meticulous research and precise construction left a memorable impression on anyone who saw it. The subtitle for the documentary's German release summed it up best: "The True History Behind Scarface and Miami Vice". Indeed, to make sure no one missed the connection, Corben and his producing partner, Alfred Spellman, persuaded Jan Hammer, composer of the Miami Vice theme, to supply the film's soundtrack. Hammer's driving, relentless synthesizer score, coupled with the inherent drama of Corben's tale of cash, killings and chaos, gave his film a propulsive energy that few documentaries—indeed, few dramas—could match.

Magnolia is now releasing the film on Blu-ray for the first time. As compensation for the eight-year delay, they are offering an extended and re-edited version (hence "Reloaded") that runs approximately thirty-six minutes longer than the original release, including updated developments on some of the key players. Many have since died from causes both natural and otherwise. In the interim, Corben and Smallwood also released Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin' with the Godmother (2008), a companion piece about a "disciple" of one the key players in Cocaine Cowboys. Here's hoping Magnolia brings it to Blu-ray in the near future.

According to director Corben, almost an hour of Reloaded is new footage, which means that some parts of the original Cocaine Cowboys have been replaced with different material. A detailed comparison was not available, but you would never know from the experience of watching Reloaded that an earlier version existed. The original movie was carved out of 150 hours of interviews, 50 hours of archival footage and 1000 stills. With the benefit of hindsight and time for reflection, Corben has obviously had time to consider other approaches to telling his story, and there must have been plenty of material worth adding—so much so that the Reloaded Blu-ray even contains deleted scenes, all of them worthwhile.

Reloaded retains the basic three-part structure that Corben established in the original Cocaine Cowboys. First, he looks at the smuggling potential that made Miami an ideal point of entry for illegal drug traffickers. Here, Corben had some of his most entertaining interviews with two fascinating characters, a former dealer named Jon Pernell Roberts, and a former pilot and smuggler, Mickey Munday. With obvious pride in both their smarts and their chutzpah, the two men detail techniques for bringing massive quantities of contraband into the country by sea and air, right under the noses of customs and law enforcement. Both began with marijuana, but cocaine offered a much bigger payoff. When the white powder took off in the Seventies, both Roberts and Munday became wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

(A side note: It was through Roberts that Corben and Smallwood first began the project that became Cocaine Cowboys. After the success of their first documentary, Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, many people approached them with ideas for a followup, but it wasn't until Corben met Roberts that he knew he'd found a subject worthy of their effort. Through Roberts, he and Smallwood gained a crucial entree to those with firsthand knowledge of illegal drug operations.)

Wealth dominates the second part of Cocaine Cowboys, but it's a specific kind of a wealth: all cash. As oceans of cash washed through Miami, the previously quiet city became an international banking center, with financial institutions from all over the world opening local branches to compete for drug money. When cash is laundered, it has to go back into the system, and banks send their excess cash to the Federal Reserve. Banks in Miami processed so much cash that, by the early Eighties, the Federal Reserve's Miami branch had a cash surplus of $6 billion—greater than all other branches in the U.S. combined.

The local economy was transformed. Expensive nightclubs blossomed. Luxury car dealerships multiplied, as did jewelry stores and other sellers of high-end goods. Drug money fueled their growth, just as Wall Street bonuses fed similar growth in Manhattan. A building boom began, as drug profits were funneled into real estate investments. Much of today's dramatic Miami skyline owes its existence to the cocaine trade.

Vast wealth from illegal activity quickly leads to corruption, and Corben collects numerous stories of police and local officials accepting bribes or actively participating in criminal acts. As the institutions of law and order collapsed, there was nothing to hold back the gangs of violent traffickers whose numbers were swelling and who, increasingly, were fighting each other over turf. Many were immigrants from Colombia whose only loyalty was to the gang or cartel that had hired them. Others arrived from Cuba during the so-called "Mariel boatlift" of 1980, when Fidel Castro used the flight of refugees as cover for emptying his jails. (This historical episode provides the opening for Scarface, with Al Pacino's Tony Montana as a typical example of the cold-blooded killer who arrived in Miami and immediately began looking for employment as a thug.)

The transformation of Miami into a war zone by feuding drug gangs is the third part of Cocaine Cowboys. Corben uses archival news footage; interviews with cops, lawyers and former DEA investigators; and, perhaps most memorable of all, an extensive prison interview with the deceptively charming Jorge "Rivi" Ayala, a top enforcer and hitman for Griselda Blanco, sometimes known as "La Madrina", "the Godmother" or "the Black Widow". A member of the Medellín Cartel, Blanco was universally feared for her ruthless brutality, which Ayala illustrates in story after gruesome story. With leaders like Blanco calling the shots, Miami and surrounding Dade County became the murder capital of America. A Time Magazine cover story in 1981 described the area as "Paradise Lost". The gangs came to be known as "Cocaine Cowboys", because their gunplay had turned Miami into the Wild West.

Corben relates these events with aplomb, and he also conveys how the situation was finally brought under control by a coalition of federal and state law enforcement, with federal authorities supplying much-needed funding and material support. La Madrina relocated to California, where she proceeded to create a whole new set of problems, and many of the lesser players fled, died or were arrested. Still, Miami was permanently transformed, and in the final section of Cocaine Cowboys, various interview subjects reflect on the aftermath. As the credits roll, Corben shows courtroom footage of Rivi Ayala's most recent attempt, in 2013, to gain his release from prison.

Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cocaine Cowboys was shot on a combination of consumer digital video and 35mm film; the director of photography was Armando Salas. However, so much of the documentary consists of standard-definition archival footage that the usual standards for evaluating a Blu-ray image barely apply. These portions are VHS quality and will never look particularly good. Moreover, some of these segments suffer from obvious damage, but their importance as factual material outweighs any concern for their prettiness.

Some of the best-looking images in Cocaine Cowboys come from high-resolution still photographs, mostly black-and-white. These take full advantage of the 1080p resolution on Magnolia Home Entertainment's AVC-encoded Blu-ray. Interviews filmed in 35mm also show good sharpness and detail, despite some obvious processing via a digital intermediate in an effort to blend the new filmed footage with the archival sources. The standard definition DV footage is adequate but is limited by its low-res origins.

At an average bitrate of 28.49 Mbps, Magnolia has provided enough bandwidth to deal with all the visual oddities created by the disparate sources from which Corben has drawn.

Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like the original Cocaine Cowboys, Reloaded has a 5.1 sound mix, presented here in lossless DTS-HD MA. This being a documentary, the focus is on the interview subjects and their dialogue in the front, but that doesn't mean the surround array goes to waste. Jan Hammer's pulsing score is a constant presence, even when it's dialed down into the background so that the current speaker can be heard more distinctly. With its twanging guitar and pulsating drive, Hammer's score conveys the restless energy of Miami's drug entrepreneurs and their dangerous lives, and also the dogged pursuit of the few determined cops who managed to remain committed to the ideal of law and order. (As Corben recounts, many police officers simply gave up and changed careers.) The track has wide dynamic range and deep bass extension, and Hammer's instrumentals make the most of its capabilities.

Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 13:52): This collection of short additional scenes suggests just how much more material could have been included in Reloaded. Of particular note is Mickey Munday's account of his sole direct encounter with Manuel Noriega, the former CIA contractor and military dictator of Panama, who was subsequently tried and imprisoned in the U.S. for drug trafficking.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for Beyond Outrage, Big Bad Wolves, The Last Days on Mars and Journey to the West, as well as a promo for AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back for updates".

Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Cocaine Cowboys, either original or Reloaded, won't provide support for either side in the war on drugs. Yes, the inability to stop the illegal drug trade did turn a previously peaceful American city into a perpetual gunfight at the O.K. Corral. But figures like Roberts and Munday raise serious questions about whether a popular recreational substance can ever be banned without disastrous consequences, just as Prohibition demonstrated the deadly cost of banning alcohol. Corben steers clear of such policy thickets. He just tells the story, and the real-life criminals who emerge are every bit as colorful and intriguing as the movie and TV characters they inspired. Great stories are defined by their villains, which is why Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded is highly recommended.