PartialMovieViewer This is probably one of the best documentaries I have seen. No one is pulling at your heartstrings; political agendas are absent; PC is non-existent - it is just a story about a very important and distressing period of history. I remember witnessing the drug culture during that time frame. I remember my moment of enlightenment was when some kid was popped in my high school for selling drugs his brother had brought back from Vietnam. It was amazing to watch this movie and marry the story to what I saw in my youth. I remember about when the drug of choice switched from a relatively harmless weed (debatable I agree) to such a destructive choice as cocaine, but I did not know the all the reasons. I know there were other drugs out there, but during this time-frame - these were the two recreational drugs. Anyways, after seeing this flick I was pretty much feeling speechless. To think that this kind of activity could have gone unchallenged, if so much violence was involved is a scary notion. Awesome depiction, I will watch it again...I am addicted.....ahhhhhh

Mr-Fusion The Miami that we know of today was built with drug money. Just reading that sentence can be downright depressing, but the story behind it is one that is oddly (maybe perversely) fascinating.Directed by Billy Corben, "Cocaine Cowboys" examines Miami's turbulent transition from a sleepy vacation town to a beachside Metropolis, financed by cocaine revenues and victims of a truly nasty drug war. At the forefront of the war was Griselda Blanco (whose death made recent headlines), crime family godmother who ordered the deaths of countless rivals. Using testimonials from several key figures in the importing of drugs, we get a detailed depiction of the violence that spilled onto Miami streets. What's staggering about the late 1970s (when the go-go party scene was in full swing in South Florida) is that while the rest of the United States was slogging through hard economic times, Miami was flourishing, due to the incredible infusion of cash into the city's economy. Key importers had so much money, they had no idea where to stash it, and actually buried it in piles in their backyards. Luxury cars were flying off the lots, and the scads of loose cash were eventually funneled into real estate, leading to the construction of Miami's brand-new glittering skyline. The insane materialistic excess of the time is part of what makes "Cocaine Cowboys" so seductive. But the party couldn't last forever, and the movie now moves into its downer of a second half. The nonstop nightlife gives way to violent shootouts, bloody mob hits, and a staggering pileup of bodies. Dade County had reportedly the highest murder rate in the United States. The situation would prove dire enough to demand presidential attention, and a new ramped-up brand of law enforcement was born, taking the fight back to Blanco and the Colombians."Cocaine Cowboys" is one big thrill, aided (in no small part) by flashy imagery and editing, and even a score by Jan Hammer that keeps us reminded of the coastal paradise patrolled by Crockett and Tubbs. To see the insane wealth of some of these guys is both intoxicating and worrisome, and Corben never lets that sinister sense of foreboding ebb, keeping just far enough away from glamorizing these lifestyles. A compulsively watchable documentary. 8/10

Shawn Watson Right, let me begin by saying that the tagline of this film is wrong. 'The true story that inspired Scarface'. Um...isn't Scarface a remake of a film from the 30s? And wasn't the bulk of Scarface's writing and production already complete by the time this documentary really gets to any story in it's chronological order? If you like watching TV shows in which you're bombarded with endless montages of unsourced and random facts then this is for you. But seriously, I have seen better production values on Channel 5. Calling this TV quality stuff is an insult to TV. The editing is all over the place and it frequently looks like the filmmakers are trying to edit together a sentence that wasn't actually said. If you have seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is interviewed on TV by Godfrey Jones then you'll know what I mean.Credit must be given to the crew for actually managing to track down the majority of the drug dealing scum and murderers for honest and open interviews. But with practically no archive footage to work with the film looks incredibly bland. It's also way too long and you'll be looking at your watch by the 80-minute mark.A sequel is in production (oh, lucky us) detailing the life of the Psycho Woman in charge of it all, but you'll excuse me if I have more interesting things to do, like licking the dust from the skirting board behind the radiator.

oscar jubis Cocaine Cowboys is narrowly focused on how Miami became the drug capital and the most dangerous city in the United States during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The film is lasciviously fascinated with the lavish lifestyle and the grotesque violence generated by the drug trade. Many obviously find such material quite fascinating. There's no denying that several anecdotes shared by dealers, smugglers, cops and veteran reporter Edna Buchanan are very amusing. Fans of TV's Miami Vice and Brian de Palma's Scarface are advised to rush to a theatre playing this film. They'll find that the real-life models of the fictional villains are even more flamboyant and vicious (the life of Griselda "the godmother" Blanco could be turned into a nifty fiction film). CocaineCowboys combines talking-head interviews with old TV footage in rat-tat-tat editing style. Shots of piles of cash and large stashes of cocaine are used as would-be punctuation marks; and there are more snapshots of bloody, perforated bodies than you've ever seen in your life.Cocaine Cowboys is documentary film-making as tabloid journalism. Its cheap thrills provide a measure of entertainment but its reportage is devoid of context and thoughtful commentary. Director Billy Corben is a native, but as one born in 1979 his view of the material is decidedly second-hand. Towards the latter stages, Cocaine Cowboys strains to present Miami as "the city that cocaine built" by hyperbolically describing late-70s Miami as a "sleepy hamlet". There is some truth to the argument but it is a self-serving and simplistic one. Moreover, the content as presented here is likely to perpetuate certain ethnic stereotypes about the Colombian community and Cuban "marielitos" (Cubans who arrived when Castro allowed migration to the US through the port of Mariel in 1980).