Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 4, 2017

Some wise critic wrapped up his Narcos: Season One Blu-ray review by stating:

While Escobar's story may have faded at least somewhat into the limelight in years subsequent to those detailed in Narcos' first season, most folks are probably going to know the infamous drug lord didn't exactly live to see old age (or frankly even much of a middle age). The ending of this tale may therefore already be a foregone conclusion, but how Narcos chooses to get there may well provide more than enough interest on its own.

(Yes, it was me, and I’m sure many of you would argue that a certain three lettered word should append that “wise” part, above.) Narcos was one of several drug trafficking themed entries I’ve reviewed over the past couple of years, offerings that have included high profile films like Sicario (also available as Sicario 4K), as well as perhaps lesser remembered productions like The Bridge: The Complete First Season and the documentary Narco Cultura, but Narcos’ unique blend of dramatization (which includes admitted fictionalization) and quasi-documentary interstitials gave the series a really visceral impact as it detailed several years in the life of Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura), the imperious and violent head of the Medellin Drug Cartel. The first season of Narcos covered an almost ungainly amount of material as it documented the efforts of Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) and Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal), two United States Drug Enforcement Agency operatives who have been tasked with bringing Escobar to justice, something that the corrupt police and paramilitary forces of Colombia hadn’t been able to achieve on their own. The interesting thing about the first season of Narcos is that it indeed featured the arrest and confinement of Escobar, something that he simply subverted, in a move that presaged a much later and now infamous prison break by El Chapo, the man who might be seen as a kind of heir to Escobar’s lifestyle and “career” choices.

Season Two still utilizes the frequent narration of Murphy in order to give context and, frankly, a bit of aid to some clunky segues, but one of the interesting things about this season, at least in its early going, is how it’s Peña who’s on the front lines of this particular battle. With Escobar more or less simply walking out of prison and back into his former way of doing business, the Colombian government is terrified, and the United States government is absolutely resolute that Escobar needs to be brought down — hopefully spectacularly, in order to send a message to anyone who would follow in his footsteps. There’s an inexorable quality to this second year of Narcos, since it is in fact a foregone conclusion as to where the story is headed, but despite some arguably needless subplots, some of them overwrought and unnecessarily melodramatic, the show continues to be a riveting and often pretty disturbing depiction of a ruthless criminal getting things done his way, come hell or high water. The fact that Narcos attempts to humanize Escobar perhaps even more in this second season may ultimately be the defining factor in how individual viewers react to the series, for some may not be able to swallow scenes that attempt to give Escobar a touchy feely quality that seems decidedly at odds with his tendency to simply walk up to people whom he perceives as being in his way and mercilessly shoot them dead.

Escobar’s seeming mind control over various Colombian “powers” is effortlessly documented in one of the first scenes of the new season, when the nefarious character simply informs a huge array of highly armed soldiers that they’re not going to stop him from continuing on his appointed rounds after he’s walked out of prison. And in fact the soldiers do nothing to stop Escobar, which allows him to return home to his long suffering wife, Tata (Paulina Gaitán). There’s some probably needless mirroring of marital strife between the Escobars and the Murphys, with both couples trying to work through the stress of living a life where everything seems to be on the verge of spiraling out of control, and some of the series’ less effective writing in these early episodes attempts to link the wifely concerns of Tata with those of Connie Murphy (Joanna Christie).

While this second season is frequently intense and often extremely well written, there is a certain feeling of padding evident as the same amount of ten episodes that the first season utilized to document decades is utilized here to document a fraction of that timeframe. Some of this is used for the generally pointless soap operatic theatrics involving various family issues, but there are also detours into some of the political maneuverings that take place to try to bring Escobar to justice, as well as some arguably needless melodrama involving the DEA itself. Counterweighting these fatty elements, though, are a number of incredibly tense interchanges, especially when an internecine war of sorts breaks out between Escobar and others in the cartel, notably Judy Moncada (Cristina Umana), a scheming competitor who would give Lucretia Borgia a run for her money. This particular subplot, along with one involving the upright and ultimately tragic figure of Horacio Carrillo (Maurice Compte), one of the few honorable police out to capture Escobar, provide the series with some of its most unforgettable (if violent) sequences. There are several moments in this second season where Escobar literally simply walks up to various characters and executes them on the spot. The series’ attempts to contrast this side of Escobar with his supposedly sweet and nurturing side with his wife and kids is a tricky gambit, and one I’m not sure Narcos is able to successfully pull off all of the time.

The series is elevated by a really commanding and often quite frightening performance by Wagner Moura, and it’s virtually stuffed to the gills with a fine array of supporting turns. Structurally, this second season kind of careens forward on autopilot to get to its unavoidable endgame, peppering its fictionalized aspects with actual news reports and other archival video. There’s some scuttlebutt that Narcos may have an ultimate third season, but it’s hard to imagine this series without the magnetic if troubling presence of Pablo Escobar.

Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Narcos: Season Two is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films (along with the rather unlikely consortium of Netflix and Gaumont) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 (some archival footage is more or less in Academy Ratio, as can be seen in screenshot 6). This second season continues the same excellent presentational aspects I discussed in our Narcos: Season One Blu-ray review. A number of sequences are graded in a somewhat odd yellow-green combo, including a lot of the material dealing with the DEA agents (see screenshots 8 and 18), but detail levels tend to remain extremely high throughout, aided by a lot of extreme close-ups, moments where fine detail levels also are almost always excellent. The more naturally graded sequences (which are in the majority) offer a really robust looking palette and generally great detail and fine detail levels. There's a lot of dark (as in dimly lit) material in this second season, and commendably shadow detail is typically quite high and there are no issues with compression anomalies.

Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Much as with the video element, Narcos: Season Two's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track provides a consistent workout for the surround channels, spring to life quite boisterously in several of the almost insane gunfights or other violence that break out at regular intervals, but also offering good discrete placement of ambient environmental effects, something that helps to elevate otherwise relatively quiet dialogue scenes that take place out of doors. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range extremely wide on this problem free track.

Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Note: While all three discs in this three disc set have a Special Features menu option, the first disc's so-called special features are trailers for other Lionsgate properties and bookmarks. The "real" supplements are contained on discs two and three.

Disc Two

• Unredacted: Declassifying Narcos Season Two (1080p; 19:36) is a really good overview with Moura and some of the creative staff detailing how they sought to bring this chaotic set of events into focus.

Disc Three

• Al Fin Cayó! - Audio Commentary with Director Andrés Baiz, Executive Producer Eric Newman, and Actor Wagner Moura


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 8:32)

Narcos: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A number of my friends who have been huge Narcos fans thought this second season was even better than the first, but I'm frankly not so sure. The series is still filled with incredible anxiety and tension, and it's also a showcase for a truly spectacular turn by Moura, but I found this second year a little too prone to veering off on needless detours, when perhaps at least a few judicious trimmings could have kept the momentum at a breakneck pace. That said, Narcos' second year is certainly no sophomore slump, and my hunch is virtually all of the people who were hooked by the series' first season will continue to be impressed with this season as well. Technical merits are strong, and even without much in the way of supplemental material, Narcos: Season Two comes Highly recommended.