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Bryan Cranston Goes Undercover in The Infiltrator

The Breaking Bad star plays a federal agent taking on Pablo Escobar's drug cartel in this new crime drama.
By Katelyn Lunders |
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Breaking Bad fans will be happy to see Bryan Cranston once again playing a family man with a criminal double life not all too different from his Emmy-winning role as Walter White. This time his second life is an act, although it’s one that seems dangerously close to crossing into reality.

The Infiltrator, based on a memoir by federal agent Robert Mazur (Cranston), gives access to his intriguing and perilous experience working undercover as a high-level money launderer for Pablo Escobar’s Colombian drug cartel.

Directed by Brad Furman (Lincoln Lawyer, Runner Runner) the film takes place in Tampa, Florida during the cocaine trade boom of the 1980s. The city is coated in white powder and stacks of dirty money made by even dirtier cartel members. The synthesized beats of the era pump through the film’s score, neon-lit strip clubs are the meeting place of choice, and the characters’ combed back hair and thick mustaches depict the era perfectly.

At the beginning of the film, Mazur is preventing cocaine shipments into the U.S., but he soon realizes that the best way for the government to wage the war on drugs is to instead start at the top of the drug chain and target the cartel’s leaders.

For this operation Mazur goes undercover with agent Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo), an excitable character whose jokes manage to keep things light despite the inherent danger of their situation.

Enter Mazur’s alias, “Bob Musella”—a slick, decadently dressed businessman who flaunts his style and confidence to infiltrate and take down the cartel. He bares no resemblance to Mazur himself, a husband and father of two who takes his job and life very seriously, planning and calculating every move. Musella, on the other hand, is a money-hungry sharpshooter that fits right in with the drug-obsessed criminals he befriends.

His job is to climb up into the highest ranks of the cartel by connecting the narcos with international bankers who agree to launder the cartel’s wealth. Despite his ability to win over many of the criminals he encounters, for every success there is a failure that keeps the audience holding its breath.

Even a veteran government agent like Mazur is not prepared for the sick, disturbed minds of the drug traffickers, to whom killing comes as naturally as brushing one’s teeth. The slightest wrong move could cost him his life.

However, the deeper Mazur gets into the cartel, the more his two lives begin to blend. As he becomes close to Escobar’s charming accomplice, Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), a fellow husband and father who welcomes Musella and his faux fiancé (Diane Kruger) into his home, it becomes questionable where Mazur begins and Musella ends.

This is thanks to Cranston’s ability to flawlessly portray a character fighting between two opposing personalities. He allows Mazur’s compassion to shine through when he is Musella, making you wonder at times if he really considers the members of the cartel his friends, and if he is truly devoted to taking them down.

The Infiltrator is two stories—a heroic story of work done by the American government to stop the Colombian drug cartel, and the disturbing story of the people behind the drug trafficking. The latter has a greater impact throughout, and the evil of the cartel will leave you feeling sick.

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