The Infiltrator (2016)

Ding-a-ling, and take your seats children because it's time for Oscar-bait semi-thinky semi-sleazy undercover period pieces! You know the type. Some high-wattage actors get all mustached, gold-chained, and spread-collared and take on the eighties. And that's pretty much what happens here. With Bryan Cranston!

It's not a great film, but it's a solid genre base hit and entertaining, if a tad too drawn out.

On the tail of the successful series Narcos comes The Infiltrator, the story of a slightly less dramatic undercover sting that chased the money, not the coke. Bryan Cranston plays Robert Mazur, a government agent who goes deep as Bob Musella, a mob- connected money launderer. Teaming up with Emir Abreau (John Leguizamo) and his cover-fiancé Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), Mazur brokers some cash-washing deals between the Medellin folks and a big investment bank, and we follow the trail as it leads deeper in and higher up.

The story is based on real-life Mazur's equally real-life book, and frankly isn't terribly interesting (as, to be fair, I suspect many other true bust tales probably are not). And the fact that real-life Mazur wrote the real-life book also presumably accounts for the ultra-pure, good-guy undergirding of Cranston's protagonist in the film. Whitewash? So be it. The victors write the history, and all that.

Director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) tries to spice things up with a dusting of sexual tension between Mazur and his cover girl (will they or won't they?); there's also a feely bromance with Benjamin Bratt, who plays the gleaming, wholesome gentleman of the drug trade. Mazur and Ertz form earnest friendships with Bratt and his family, hinting that when the time comes it might be hard for Mazur to sell his pals down the river.

Except it's not. Said friendships feel too forced and phony, and Bratt's genteel drug lord character strains credibility -- he's just too polite and wholesome and nice. There's no real doubt that goodie-goodie Cranston will do the right thing in the end.

But that doesn't make The Infiltrator a bad movie. For starters, Cranston is a really terrific actor. Even in a throwaway opening vignette with a bowling alley waitress, his microexpressions just seep realism. His performance here is fantastic, and it's worth watching this movie just for him. The supporting cast is earnest and hardworking and generally believable. There also are some pretty locations, great fashions, flamboyant characters, classic meanies, and crisp shots. It all comes together quite nicely.

And then it stays there. The Infiltrator falls short (long?) in its pacing, running probably a half hour past its bedtime. It's perhaps hard to fault Furman for this, given that he was directing from a script his own mother wrote (no joke -- must be a first?). Happy Mother's Day, I left your chaff in my picture! Either way, you might find yourself wondering when time's up.

All told, The Infiltrator might not be best of breed, but it's engaging, atmospheric, nicely shot, and offers an interesting take on the 80s drug war -- one with fewer Uzis and drug mules and more middle eastern bankers. Relax and enjoy.

Fmovies: If I had an award to give for the most disengaging movie of year I would give it to this movie. Right now. I wouldn't even wait till I've seen all the movies that I want to in 2016. Because this is probably the most bland, heartless movie I have ever seen. Which is something I never thought would happen in a Bryan Cranston movie. The movie is about a government Infiltrator. He is given the task of going undercover in one of the biggest mobs in history and break them apart. With this kind of source material it would seem impossible to make a boring movie. You have an R rating, one of the best actors working, and one of the craziest true stories ever.

And you did the very thing no one could have imagined. You made one of the dullest mob films I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. The only reason I am not calling this one of the hands down worst films of the year is because of Mr. Cranston. Who, despite the garbage he is working with, turns in a typically excellent performance.

Every else does a pretty great job as well. But this is one movie that proves that an ensemble cast means nothing when the movie around them sucks. You'd think going into a film like this that there would be stakes, or tension. But there isn't, at all. Even scenes where bad dudes are looking over a briefcase filled with recording equipment don't land. Why? Because that scene lasts less than ten seconds.

You can't expect people to feel nervous about what is happening when the person looking over the case doesn't even touch it. He looks at it from a distance for a few seconds and clears it. Where's the tension in that? Moments like this plague the film. Anytime actual conflict arises it stays for so short a time that it doesn't feel remotely nerve racking.

The makers put these moments in the film to make you nervous right? So, why do they mean nothing to the rest of the film? This mans whole career is based around secrecy and going with the flow. But when the entire film feels scripted there is nothing to get invested in. It doesn't feel like the bad guys are controlling anything.

It feels like Cranston could have done whatever he wanted to them. If he asked them to handcuff themselves and walk into a prison cell, I'm confident they would have done it. It was so incredibly boring to watch. Even when it tries to show how the job is affecting his family life, it's bland. That has everything to do with the absolutely atrocious characters. There's no one to care about here in the slightest.

I was constantly waiting for some one to die so that we could really see who these people were and how would react to that but that moment never came. Not only does this movie feel artificial and generic but it plays everything so safe. Despite being in the middle of a mob that prides themselves in cutting people up you never see anything like that. So how can we be invested in our main character or his "struggle"? This disregard of storytelling is only highlighted by it's run time, which feels ten times longer than the two hours it claims to clock in at.

There is so much that this film does wrong it actually blew me away. Among all the reasons I listed there's also a by the numbers soundtrack, poor direction, and an utter disregard to small details. When your film is mostly meant to be character driven and every one of them is a walking blank slate then you have a big problem. The only saving grace is Cranston and his incredibly convincing per

Greetings again from the darkness. The war on drugs has become a bit of a punchline in the real world, but has proved to be fertile ground for filmmaking: Sicario (2015), American Hustle (2013), Traffic (2000). Additionally, the popular Netflix show "Narcos" takes on the same Medellin drug cartel as this latest from director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer, 2011). The movie is based on the true events of Robert Mazur's book "The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel" (a title that's very descriptive, if a bit long).

Bryan Cranston continues his impressive Hollywood run this time as Robert Mazur, the man who goes undercover to expose the money-laundering system of the cartel. His flamboyant alter-ego is known as Bob Musella, a character that allows Mazur (and Cranston) to show a side not typically seen. His antics get him inside Columbian Drug Lord Escobar's organization in the mid-1980's.

When Mazur realizes the traditional method of chasing the drugs isn't working, he decides the age-old idiom "follow the money" might be a better approach. This takes him inside the world of international money laundering, and he learns that banks and governments are quite dependent on this huge business of drug money movement.

There are specific groups of people here: the government agencies, the small task force, the corrupt (and appreciative) bankers, the various levels within the cartel, and even Mazur's family Â… all these forces intertwine to make life difficult for Mazur and his team, and provide a glimpse into the complexities of undercover work.

In addition to stellar work from Cranston, the cast is terrific. John Leguizamo plays Mazur's motivated partner Abreu; Diane Kruger plays his undercover fiancé; Juliet Aubrey is Mazur's real life wife who doesn't much appreciate his declining the early retirement offer; Olympia Dukakis provides a dash of comedy relief as Mazur's Aunt; Yul Vasquez is the creepy money manager for Escobar; Benjamin Bratt plays Roberto, Escobar's right-hand man and the key to Mazur's case; and Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live In, 2011) is Roberto's wife. Also present are Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs and the always great Michael Pare.

There are a couple of standout scenes – one involving chicken and voodoo, and another with a briefcase mishap, but my favorite is the Happy Anniversary cake scene in the restaurant where Mazur flashes his alter-ego Musella for his real wife to see … and she is understandably stunned.

The movie does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of the era (30 years ago), but it's somehow missing the elevated suspense it portends to drag us and the characters through. Some elements seemed impossible to believe – why would Mazur risk his family's safety? The timeline was a bit muddled. We aren't sure how much time has passed, but there certainly don't seem to be enough interactions before Roberto is telling Mazur he is "like family". It plays a bit like those romance movies where the two leads are head over heels in love after a conversation or two. An element is missing and it affects the level of tension throughout the film. And that's something even a Leonard Cohen song ("Everybody Knows") can't fix.

The Infiltrator fmovies. I had been waiting to watch this movie for some time so when I finally did I was really stoked to check it out. Bryan Cranston in the movie definitely peaked my interest as he did a really great job in Breaking Bad. Let me start by saying I thought the production value of this movie was excellent. The retro vibe in the movie really helps sell it and in some sense is almost comical. Those huge 80s cell phones, the awkward 80s clothes, it really helps sell this movie and create a nice vibe. However past that there really seems to be something missing from this movie. The first part of it starts out rather well. For the most part in the beginning of the movie the acting is done well and the story seems to move along at a decent pace. However toward the last 1/3 of the move it really seems like we are simply going through motions from A to B to C. And while they are able to sell some thing to the viewer in the movie, a good deal of what they were hoping for seems to be lacking. They really try to sell this idea that the main characters get caught up and attached vibe in the last 1/3 of the movie. However neither the script nor the acting really pulls that off. You never really have this sense that he is sucked in and almost guilty for being an agent. They try hard to sell it in the script but the emotional attachment simply wasn't there. There is a line at the end of the movie that really makes the failure stand out as one character says "none of your real friends went to jail today" But at no time was there any real belief that any sort of real relationship developed. Which leaves the viewer with the reality that the whole movie is just a string of scenes from A to Z but no dynamic or character development. There are two kinds of scenes in a movie. The 1st kind moves the movie forward. The second kind tells us something important about a character. There is plenty of the 1st kind in this movie. The second kind really seems to be lacking. For that reason I gave the movie a 7/10. It's an interesting story and going from point A to point Z will keep you entertained. But after watching it you will realize nothing really memorable happened in the movie and that it was just kind of a bland movie.

There are many reasons to like The Infiltrator. It takes place in the '80s, it's suspenseful, and it gives us a really gritty inside look at what life is like for a good guy who goes undercover to work with the Colombian drug cartel.

Which is what Bryan Cranston's character does. He's a guy on the verge of retirement and could easily leave to spend time with his wife and kids, but takes this one last job. And it proves to be the toughest one yet as he poses as a money launderer to try and take down Pablo Escobar's entire drug trafficking network.

It takes place in the Reagan-'80s and so there's this whole overt camera filter over the whole film. It's not too distracting, but it's also not terribly necessary. But it's minor.

The whole thing plays out as one giant sting operation. And the filmmakers understand that in a 2 hour movie, you don't need to run through all the details in one quick dialogue-filled scene. However, it would've been nice if they had given us a little more along the way.

It starts unraveling a little over an hour in. There's about a 30 minute stretch where you're looking at the person sitting next to you saying, "What's happening?" There's a lot left unexplained, but I guess there was more concern about the movie not becoming any longer.

The film is long at 127 minutes, but it's never really an issue. We need the time to process what's happening and for Cranston's character to evolve over the course of the film.

It tightens back up in the home stretch, culminating in an emotionally impressive final scene.

The always-under-appreciated John Leguizamo plays Cranston's partner and does a very good and believable job.

There seems to be this slightly neglected theme intermittently placed throughout the film about the American economy collapsing without laundered money. It's an interesting idea and one that should have been touched upon way more.

Twizard Rating: 80

LJ'S QUICK MOVIE REVIEW

"I think we've been doing this backward. We've been following the drugs to get to the bad guys. What if we chased the money?"

"The Infiltrator", starring Bryan Cranston, follows the fascinating tale of Robert Mazur, a U.S. Customs Agent who goes undercover in a drug cartel.

The stakes are extremely high. If Mazur's disguise isn't convincing, he will be brutally tortured and murdered. He, along with his two partners, have to deal with intelligent drug-lords, ruthless thugs, and shrewd businessmen. Watch as the trio concoct risky plans and false identities while avoiding the suspicion of their targets.

The severe tension is truly felt through the amazing performances. Cranston steals the show, while Diane Kruger, Benjamin Bratt, and Emir Areu are all top-notch. There are nerve-wracking moments where viewers sincerely fear for the characters' safety.

Overall, "The Infiltrator" is a riveting and complex movie with great direction and superb acting. If crime-dramas are your cup of tea, I highly recommend watching it.

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