The Infiltrator. Directed by Brad Furman. Starring Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, Benjamin Bratt, John Leguizamo and Amy Ryan. Rating: 7 (out of 10).
Breaking Bad made Bryan Cranston an A-list star with its fast and loose take on formula. Turn everything in a story on its head and see what Bryan can do with it.
He’s always been known as a character actor and studio bosses weren’t exactly thrilled when creator Vince Gilligan wanted him to portray Walter White on the TV series.
Like Bogart before him, Cranston never refuses a job, creating a résumé that has more than its fair share of hack work mixed in with quality projects. The money men looked far and wide before settling on him for the role.
The rest is history which will play on the AMC Network, Netflix and other media platforms ad infinitum. Breaking Bad’s phenomenal success gave Cranston almost an iconic status and bigger paycheques.
He earns his money in The Infiltrator where the camera follows his character around almost continuously for over two hours of screentime. Cranston plays U.S. Customs Service special agent Robert Mazur who used an undercover alias “Bob Musella” to infiltrate the upper echelons of Colombian Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel.
Based on the memoirs of the real-life Mazur (“one of the world’s leading experts on money laundering”), director Brad Furman’s movie was written by his mother Ellen Furman Brown. Apparently the two have worked on many scripts together over the years but this was the first screenplay that has been produced.
The story is as much about corrupt banking, in particular the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), as it is about Mazur or Escobar. All of the usual suspects parade through The Infiltrator as Cranston’s undercover character gets closer to the source of the drugs and money.
At its height in the mid-80’s the Medellin Cartel smuggled 15 tons of cocaine into the U.S. every week, generating more than a billion dollars of hard cash each month. Much of the money was laundered through the BCCI, the seventh largest private bank in the world at the time, founded by Pakistani financier Agha Hasan Abedi and backed by Middle Eastern and South Asian investors as well as the Bank of America. Mazur’s undercover sting operation in Tampa, Florida targeted BCCI’s dealings with Escobar.
Cinematically there’s much that’s familiar here but that’s where bringing in Cranston pays off big for Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer; Runner, Runner). The veteran actor’s MO can twist and turn with the best of them, giving an old story new energy. Add an excellent ensemble cast – including John Leguizamo (as sidekick Emir Abreu), Diane Kruger (as “fiance” Kathy Ertz), Benjamin Bratt (as Escobar lieutenant Roberto Alcaino) – and you’ve got yourself a Hollywood thriller.
Breaking Bad was all about family and variations of dysfunction that pull things apart. The Infiltrator moves through the same emotional landscape with Cranston’s character at the core of both real and imagined relationships. Even though he’s working from a script the actor never looks like he knows where things are going. Cranston personifies edgy. We’re talking Raymond Chandler territory with no end in sight.
