I never could have guessed how intricate the cocaine industry was at this time. I was born post the cocaine era so I did not know how incredibly different the laws were during that time. This documentary gives so much insight into this high-speed world of drugs. I loved how the director allowed the members involved to tell their stories; however I wish that he had let them tell all of their stories & it was kind of jumpy when moving a narration when moving from one involved member to another would help the transition to be better understood. But now I'm hooked I wished that some of the involved members had not passed away because I have got to know more the system was so complex I want to know how it all works.

"Cocaine Cowboys" investigates and discloses the commodity that helped make Miami what it is today. I know there are some who bemoan the fact that the Miami of today has anything to do with the drug economy of the 70's and 80's, then there are those who relish the fact Miami was built on drugs. And if you take away anything from this documentary it is that Miami was built on drugs.

There were a lot of names mentioned in this documentary, though most of them are not worth repeating. Most of the narrating was done by three people:

Jon Roberts, a wholesale drug dealer who worked with the Medellin cartel.

Mickey Munday, a drug runner.

Jorge "Vivi" Ayala, an enforcer.

They all narrate how easy it was to move drugs into the country from Colombia through Florida. They also narrate about the obscene amounts of money they made, and finally, the intense violence that led to the end of the big time drug trafficking. One person who escalated the violence was Griselda Blanco aka the Black Widow aka the Queen of Cocaine. She was a ruthless drug queenpin who would just as soon shoot you as say hi to you. Her blood lust drove the Miami murder rate up to over 500 a year by 1980, and it subsequently brought all kinds of law enforcement heat down on everyone.

Everyone narrating in this documentary speaks so casually and matter-of-factly as though they were talking about developing and selling the newest widget when in fact they're talking about bringing poison into the country as well as drug wars. I found it hard to listen to them and not have a serious loathing towards them when the millions they earned was blood money. But these are the guys in the know. They were a part of the culture and they are best suited to talk about a stage in American history that many would like to forget.

I wanted to like Cocaine Cowboys a more intriguing documentary than I did. It lacks no influence in terms of its information in the world of big-stakes crime of a period that seems long ago within a thirty-year time frame. I liked hearing details in the stories, like the car towing company the dealers had as their back-up when driving around the cocaine shipments. And the scenes involving- and properly invoking- the years of Noriega and Panama, as well as the small Mafia statistics that carry a lot of weight (no pun intended on the actual boss, more powerful than Escobar) all out of Columbia. And some of the interviews and clips shown are absorbing in their 'been-there-done-that' quality. But there's an oppressive side to how Billy Corben shoots, edits and puts the music to the film. I don't mind in the theory of it how one goes into a cocaine documentary making it a fast-pace story. But it veers more into being in a TV scope- think E! True Hollywood story more than anything- than more traditional documentaries. This may be fine for some wanting a messy rush. However it's repetitive and lacking in any creative flow, not just in how it jumps and pivots through its images of people talking or in what's going on as if it were a theatrical trailer, but to hear the same Scarface-like music over and over behind people talking who shouldn't have music going on in some of their answers. And the one guy who's interviewed most (I forget his name, he's the ex-big time Miami coke dealer with the mustache) adds to the annoyance factor after a while; somehow one might find the guy more interesting in smaller doses, not as the one blabbering and bragging for 45 minutes of the film until it gets to the gun-blazing Columbians.

It might be worth a little bit of time if on TV, where it has more of a tabloid edge on things (if whatever edge I can't say for certain). But I'd much rather take on a book two or re-watch Blow or good parts of Scarface or Miami Vice to get a better dramatized take on the facts than see it all the way through again.