Bryan Cranston is back in the drug business.
In the popular Netflix series, Breaking Bad, he played a high school chemistry teacher who moonlights as a methamphetamine manufacturer and distributor. Now, in Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator, which opens in Canada on August 12, he portrays a U.S. federal agent posing as a money launderer in an elaborate sting operation.
Adapted from Robert “Bob” Mazur’s 2009 memoir, The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel, this fast-moving crime thriller unfolds as the U.S. government goes after the kingpin of the illicit cocaine trade.
By the mid-1980s, Escobar’s syndicate was exporting 14 tons of cocaine, with a street value of $400 million, into Florida every week. Flush with torrents of undeclared income, Escobar resorted to various methods to “clean” his earnings.
Mazur (Cranston), an accountant by profession, is given the job of arresting high-level members of Escobar’s gang and the bankers laundering his profits. Masquerading under a false name and pretending to be a slick money launderer with links to legitimate businesses, Mazur establishes contact with drug dealers in Tampa in an attempt to reach more powerful ones close to Escobar. He works with a partner (John Leguizamo) who’s at ease in the sleazy and violent drug world.
In pursuit of this goal, Mazur frequents a flashy nightclub where strippers double as prostitutes. Being a happily married man with two children, he’s reluctant to consort with hookers. His partner advises him to go with the flow.
Having gained the trust of local gangsters, he moves up a rung and is introduced to one of Escobar’s associates. Mazur convinces him he can enhance his profits. Next, he confers with corrupt bankers in Panama willing to flout the law.
Mazur’s assignment is dangerous. He’s followed by mobsters. When his cover is almost blown in a restaurant, he assaults a poor waiter, much to his wife’s horror. Riding in a car as a passenger, he comes within a whisker of being shot.
He and another agent, Kathy (Diane Kruger), befriend Escobar’s chief lieutenant, Pedro (Benjamin Bratt). Posing as a couple soon to be married, they accept Pedro’s impromptu invitation to fly down to Colombia in a corporate jet for further discussions.
Playing their respective roles brilliantly, Mazur and Kathy make a favorable impression on Pedro and his wife, who will bitterly regret this instant friendship.
The Infiltrator, brimming with disreputable characters, moves along at a brisk pace. Cranston, Kruger and Bratt turn in high-octane performances in this competently-crafted film.