Posted in: Movies, Review | Tagged: bryan cranston, film, movie, Review, The Infiltrator

The Infiltrator Review: Deep Undercover Agent Infiltrates Drug Cartel? How Original

There are a number of genres where the typical story arc has been done so many times, there's almost no surprises along the way. Beyond the possible amount of interest the film's protagonist might have, most of the surrounding characters may as well be interchangeable from any of dozens of similar films. In the realm of war films and ripped-from-the-headlines crime films, even those tend to blur after a while. The Infiltrator is just one of those types of films. Based on the autobiography of former U.S. Customs Agent Robert Mazur (here played by Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston), the film follows his undercover operations to infiltrate Pablo Escobar's money laundering operations in the mid-1980s.

The story was adapted for the screen by director Brad Furman's mother, Ellen Brown Furman. For a first time scriptwriter she does a passable job. There's some character action and dialogue that just doesn't quite ring true for the vernacular of the period.  Perhaps the challenge is that for undercover agents, the gigs themselves likely follow generally similar patterns: they arrive, have some clever skill to make them useful for whatever crime family they might have gotten into bed with, then there's a period of the crime family trying to sort out if the agent is actually an agent or not. Some other lieutenants will sense something is amiss and try to catch the agent slipping up and thus exposing themselves, but then that won't go as planned only serving to bring the agent in tighter to the fold. Then they'll get found out and it's a race to get out with the evidence before the clock runs out and they're discovered. For bonus points, there'll be at least one drug cartel spy in the agent's home department. Which of the above are included in The Infiltrator? You'll have to watch it to find out, but I can say that it's more than one of them.

Cranston is fine, just as the film is fine. So what's the problem? It's only fine. It's like a wine that's served as the house red at Olive Garden – it's not so bad that you spit it out, in fact it's well enough. The downside is that you just find yourself thinking about the better ones you've had in years past and it just reminds you all the more of what you're missing.

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