That show of restraint might be what separates Corben from so many of the oversized characters he chronicles.

| Aug 11, 2021

Ropey graphics and sub-Scarface synth music simply add to the feeling that you're getting a low budget experience.

Full Review | Feb 6, 2018

A documentary examining the Miami drug wars of the early 1980s in exhaustive - and occasionally nauseating - detail.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 6, 2018

Documentarian Billy Corben's revealing film exposes the methods and players in South Florida's drug trade that literally built the city of Miami that we know today with billions of dollars in blood cash.

| Original Score: A | Apr 24, 2009

With a nearly two-hour running time that includes its share of blowhards, repetition, and cheesy attempts to heighten drama, Cocaine Cowboys brings to mind an unfortunate comparison: Miami Vice. The movie.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2008

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 24, 2007

Grisly crime scene snaps accompany the story, which makes Miami Vice look like a tea party and Florida like hell on earth.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 23, 2007

The haystacks of cash and coke are laughably insane - as is the head-count: thousands of people were gunned to death. This is the only state in the world where Scarface might raise a smile.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2007

At nearly two hours, Cocaine Cowboys (appropriately) doesn't know when to stop talking, but as a chronicle of a demented epoch, it's both entertaining and just about definitive.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2007

Without narration, the doc has scant moral compass, its very title celebrating the machine gun-wielding mercenaries involved.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2007

Too often the film crosses the line between recording his subjects' illegal activities and aggrandising them.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 23, 2007

It's the sort of glamour-meets-violence drugs-crime story on which lads' mags thrive: unqualified, over-reverent and hysterical.

| Original Score: 2/6 | Nov 22, 2007

Fast-paced and fascinating, but a little too frenetic for its own good.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 3, 2007

Rich in detail and fascinating characters.

| Mar 1, 2007

There's so much compelling material here, all of it salacious and dangerous and so enjoyable that you might just feel a little guilty afterward.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 8, 2006

Cocaine Cowboys is a fascinating look at a time when Miami was so flush with cash from cocaine deals that it was completely buffered from a nationwide recession.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 7, 2006

The Jan Hammer music on the soundtrack works overtime to assure us that Cocaine Cowboys is the real, nastier version of Miami Vice

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 1, 2006

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 18, 2006

This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 10, 2006

It's watchable, but like gorging on every rotten issue of the old Confidential magazine.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 10, 2006