Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded

6/10 documentary

If you like documentaries that provide real insight in to the vicious and real Miami drug trading war of the 1980's rather than the superfluous TV show Miami Vice that was glorifying the drug trade with a great musical score and TV stars Crockett and Tubbs then you will appreciate the real story told from some of the key players who were the criminals and the Miami Dade officers who were chasing them.

An interesting story line of this documentary is how the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro released the most hardened criminals of one his most toughest prisons and shipped them to the United States where they landed in Miami and not only continued with their criminal past but not surprisingly caused Miami's rape and murders to more than double after these unknown Cuban criminals with no criminal past in the U.S. were allowed to walk freely in Miami. The head drug lord in Miami was the crazy and short (5 foot 3 inches in height) Cuban Rafa Cardona Salazar who was held responsible for dozens of drug related executions in Miami, was eventually gunned down himself in his Medellin car dealership. Mickey Munday who was a smuggler pilot and businessmen accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars of cash and property by transporting hundreds of tons of cocaine into Miami with his planes. He avoided arrest for six years until he was captured in 1992. Seven years later he was released from prison.

The key narrator of Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded is a notorious hit-man named Jorge Rivera Ayala. His nickname is Rivi and he is now imprisoned for being the hit-man for Miami drug lord Griselda Blanco, known as the Miami Godmother of the Cocaine Cowboys. He remains in prison as he was dropped as a witness for apparently having phone sex with secretaries at the Miami-Dade state attorney's office. I guess since he liked whacking people, he just couldn't help whacking himself off.

As for Rivi's boss the Godmother, Griselda Blanco, she was eventually arrested in 1985 and upon completing her incarceration in 2004 she was deported back to Columbia. On the night of September 3, 2012, 69 year old Griselda Blanco was killed in a drive-by shooting while stepping out of a butcher shop by a motorcyclist in Medellín, Colombia.

The combination of Rivi's description of the actual events as they occurred along with other criminals such as Micky Munday and Jon Roberts describe the events as "great adventures" with the rewards for smuggling in millions of tons of cocaine for the Columbian drug cartel of endless supply of millions of dollars to spend on luxury cars, mansions, and women.

What I interpret from this documentary but little is explained, is the endless corruption that must have existed within the Miami police force, judicial system and numerous government agencies which allowed the Colombian drug cartel to basically freely transport and sell tons of cocaine in to Miami. Rivi explains that on a daily basis they talked about whacking lawyers who did not cooperate with the cartel, and of course the murders of dozens of co-conspirators who were even just thought of not towing the line.

This is a pretty good "straight from the horses mouth" account of the cut throat cocaine smuggling drug trade of the 1980's. It reflects that even the United States government sometimes is asleep at the switch and allows criminal empires to exceed even fortune 500 companies net worth. You will also get more insight in to the criminal(s) behaviour by checking out the DVD extras in the special features section as more in depth interviews are provided. I give the documentary a good 6 out of 10 rating.

Whenever you can track down the original cut or watch the much more available 'Reloaded' edition, 'Cocaine Cowboys' is a fascinating piece about the powder keg explosion that was cocaine to the United States. Both versions are "talking heads" style of docs, but I can tell you this update is not just a cash-in. Has a tighter overall package. Better editing. Interviews, snippets, soundbites are expanded on or allowed the necessary time to breath, fully flesh out the violence & horror.

Bad cops, good cops, successful smugglers, corrupt banks, Colombian hitmen and the array of innocent people caught in the blast radius. Many movies, tv shows have used this real piece of history for their backdrops and while some is bound to be known to seasoned viewers, there's also many new nuggets. Everyone knows about the Mariel boatlift, how it affected things, but did you know about Arthur McDuffie or a plot to murder a senator? 2.5 hours is a good chunk of time and it's loaded with tons of info, finely edited into a complete package here.

If you want a peek into drug smuggling with scary, sometimes smart characters this is your meal ticket. It's an interesting subject worth a watch and this covers it all from every angle without feeling sensational or cutting corners. Director, creator Billy Corben would follow up with a subpar sequel 'Hustlin' With the Godmother' solely focused on Griselda Branco that already gets done justice here. Also a third entry 'Kings of Miami' that I thought was a return to form although the original is tops.

Okay, here's the story. I come from the gutter. I know that. I got no education but that's okay. I know the street, and I'm making all the right connections. With the right woman, there's no stopping me. I could go right to the top.

I not only saw the documentary, I lived it, I became a Metro Dade county police officer in Aug of 1980 and retired in 2002, I was on the scene of at least half the drug related killings pictured in the video, and a whole lot more that were not. As if that weren't enough, I also went to High school with the quintessential Cocaine Cowboy Mickey Munday, oddly enough I didn't make the connection till I watched this video 50 something years later, I recall him as a redheaded nerd who the girls wanted nothing to do with, if they had only known that one day he would be buying entire neighborhoods and burying trash bags full of 20s and hundreds.

Billy Corben has mined the devastating days of the renegade drug import business in Miami in no less than three Cowboy Chronicles. I think I've seen them all now as I only now saw Reloaded. I take it's the middle one, but there's cross-pollination so I don't think it really matters. I will say this one doubles down on some key players and adds plenty of interspersed interviews as well as ample narration by these key players that were still alive at the time the film was made. I think by focusing on these people the film stands on it's own possibly being more laser focused. Miami was truly the perfect drug and crime storm in a time most of us felt the US had moved way beyond the "Wild West Days" where law and order existed only at the end of a gun. The film makes it clear that wasn't the case as the multiple law enforcement agencies were corrupt on a local level and asleep on the Federal one. The devastation really is all around constantly yet the film somehow fails to get the horrific gravity of it Maybe it's just because the key players talk almost casually when explaining their actions? There still is a lot here to digest and it is interesting in that "fact is stranger than fiction" department that this stuff all happened before justice began to clean it up. At the end of the day it was only because the drug money was lucrative in the "billions and billions" range. The intersection of so many things, even the Iran-Contra drugs for arms craziness, will hopefully never be repeated.