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France, Spain, Belgium · 2014
Rated PG-13 · 2h 0m
Director Andrea Di Stefano
Starring Benicio del Toro, Josh Hutcherson, Brady Corbet, Claudia Traisac
Genre Romance, Thriller
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A young Canadian, Nick, moves to Columbia with his brother in search of adventure. When Nick falls for a young woman, Maria, he soon finds out that her uncle is Pablo Escobar. Growing closer to his girlfriend's family, he finds his life in danger when he's pulled into the dangerous world of the family business.
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
This is one of the greatest missed opportunities in recent cinema history: Del Toro looms more impressively on camera than he does in the marketing material, embodying a wicked man's perverse sense of family, honor, and self-interest.
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Meanwhile, everyone in the theatre is thinking: Given that I paid good money to learn about the world’s most frightening cocaine king, why am I watching a movie about the world’s most stupid Canadian?
Whatever fascination the film holds belongs solely to Del Toro and his vanity-free impression of Escobar as a titan whose potbelly and gym shorts do not put the slightest dent in a charisma that hypnotizes a nation.
Benicio Del Toro's performance is showy, a great actor's parade of indulgences that occasionally sets the deranged camp tone that should have been the narrative's starting point.
Di Stefano's memorable debut feature makes up for its lack of sophistication with constant forward motion.
Escobar: Paradise Lost plays more like Greek tragedy than the kind of drug-war tale we’d get in a broader, bigger film, and that is no small part of the many reasons it works.
In a footnote to history that is still too close for comfort, he’s the real meaning of paradise lost.
"Escobar” offers an odd mix of action movie, romantic melodrama and cautionary traveler’s tale, which works better than it should thanks to Del Toro’s fascinating performance and Di Stefano’s assured, muscular helming.
Escobar: Paradise Lost takes such a limited view of this multi-faceted figure that it fails as portraiture, and the real center of the film is too much of a bland good guy to compensate.
The Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy
It’s an impressive debut, an ambitious project pulled off with confidence.
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