Cocaine Cowboys

Director: Billy Corben
Cinematography: Armando Salas
Studio info: Magnolia Pictures, 118 mins.

Cocaine Cowboys is a stimulating head rush of a documentary, diagramming the surreal and vicious history behind Miami’s notorious drug wars during the ’70s and ’80s. Director Billy Corben constructs a hyperactive slideshow of neon glitz and harrowing interview footage, packing grainy, hand-held police video around direct accounts of some of the most infamous movers behind the trafficking. Corben focuses on three main characters in the film; playboy distributor Jon Pernell Roberts, crafty smuggler Mickey Munday and remorseless hit man Jorge “Rivi” Ayala. The first two deliver rags-to-riches tales of their makeshift entrepreneurship as they pioneer cocaine deliveries from Columbia to U.S. shores. The real star, though, is Ayala, who nonchalantly recounts his contract-killing spree with the affable demeanor of a family member reminiscing at the dinner table. The footage moves disturbingly fast for a nonfiction film, injecting the audience into the tumultuous era’s strung-out decadence and anxiety with an authenticity the History Channel rarely achieves.