Written by Jim Warren
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
Eddie (to Syd): "A bear did cocaine!"
Well, if there's a future cult classic in the making, it's probably going to be this movie. Except it won't because this will definitely be something of a massive hit. A movie about a bear going feral after ingesting a lot of cocaine. Yup, not as crazy as it sounds folks.
Loosely based on the infamous Pablo Eskobear incident from 1985, this film opened with drug snuggled Andrew C. Thornton II (Matthew Rhys) dropping his bags of cocaine into the forest from a plane by accident and then plumetting to his death in a desperate attempt to retrieve said drugs. Unfortunately for nearly every other character in this movie, it's a black American bear who gets their hands on the coke and the results are messy as anything.
With an extremely feral bear off it's hinges on the white powder all this movie needed was a group of characters for the bear to go after in it's pursuit of more coke and we certainly got an eclectic group here. Most of them of course not surviving the events of this adventure and some who just about managed to make it out of the incident alive, but just barely.
The few lucky survivors of course included a single mother and nurse named Sari (Keri Russell) who found herself looking for her daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and the latter's friend, Henry (Christian Convery). Children shouldn't be experimenting with drugs and after this experience, I don't think Dee Dee and Henry will ever touch the stuff again. Outside of the bear herself, Sari might be the most prominent female character in the movie.
Then there was Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), a grieving husband whose wife recently died and who was also revealed to be the son of another drug lord named Syd (Ray Liotta). Eddie's scenes with best friend, Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr) were the strongest of the movie along with their temporary alliance with gang member Stache (Aaron Holliday) in trying to find the cocaine, only to encounter both an overly ambitious Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr) and of course the bear itself, along with Syd and a climatic final showdown in a cave with not just mama bear herself but also her cubs.
In the end, we got our survivors but what about the victims themselves. Syd learned that not putting family first could be fatal while throughout the movie we got peppered with plenty of cannon fodder for the bear. This included an unfortunate newly wed Elsa (Hannah Hoekstra), two ambulance people, Beth (Kahyun Kim) and Tom (Scott Seiss) as well as a park ranger named Liz (Margo Martindale) and Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), all of who got taken down by that bear in scenes that were suitably gory and even funny in parts. Yes, there was a lot of humour throughout this whole film.
- There was mid and post credit scenes including the dog Rosette having ingesting Daveed's fingers that Bob had shot off him. Elsa's husband, Olaf (Kristofer Hivju) was also a rather fun character.
- The real life bear unfortunately had died from ingesting cocaine, so this movie does take a lot of creative liberties with this story.
- Standout music: White Lines (Don't Do It) by Melle Mel.
- Chronology: 1985 in Knoxville, Tennessee for this movie.
Cocaine Bear was every bit as daft and fun to watch as a movie as the trailers and marketing have been for the last few months. Some genuinely funny scenes, a tiny bit of gory moments and a largely solid group of engaging characters did make for an enjoyable romp. Elizabeth Banks might have her hit and miss moments as a director but this one definitely fell into the hit category.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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