INTRODUCTION
I grew up as a child in Africa hearing about Pablo Escobar, you would seem to look like a cave man if you had no idea who Pablo Escobar was. I feel my peers were concerned about telling stories of his wealth especially the famous burning of 8 Million Dollars to keep his daughter warm because of cold-it was something we considered as crazy. Another story would be his great picture taken in front of the white house in Washington D.C. I would say my peers considered him as a demi-god. I knew he was a drug lord but certainly he had a childhood, family, business or life before drugs, he had motives for his decisions, etc. I was more interested in knowing about that. A friend of mine recommended Narcos to me, I had placed it on my watchlist for about six months until I finally watched the first episode in Season one and that was all it took for me to be glued to my TV screen erasing all previous memories I had about Escobar, and starting off with his journey in the movie to properly understand who Pablo Escobar was.
Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you “Narcos”- an American crime action filled drama series showing on Netflix. Narcos is a movie based on the life of Pablo Escobar (a famous and notorious drug lord from Colombia) who got so rich from growing and distributing cocaine around the world especially to the United States of America(his biggest customers),it further shows his battles with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers. Season 1 and 2 showed his life, family and the business structure while Season 3 showed his death and the rise of a new drug cartel.
KEY CAST AND CREWS
WAGNER MOURA AS PABLO ESCOBAR
BOYD HOLBROOK AS STEVE MURPHY & PEDRO PASCAL AS JAVIER PENA
PAULINA GAITAN AS TATA ESCOBAR
MAURICE COMPTE AS HORACIO CARRILLO
THE PLOT
The series started off with an insight into the life of Pablo Escobar in the late early 70’s to early 90’s according to the narrator. It was the period Pablo Escobar and his cousin Gustavo who was viewed as his second in command had started producing cocaine. Meanwhile in the United States our Protagonist in the series, DEA agent Steve Murphy was getting ready to join Agent Javier Pena in Bogota, Colombia. The first episode kicks off with a scene showing Chilean drug chemist Mateo “Cockroach” making a deal with Escobar to transport his products, this made them business partners. Pablo had the family information of each and every police officer on duty stationed on his cocaine distribution routes and threatened to harm them if anything happens to his products. This made him the most recognized smuggler in Medellin as he was able to transport any illegal product in and out of Colombia freely.
Seeing that he was getting bigger each passing day, Pablo and Gustavo decided to expand the Cockroach processing lab by making it bigger than the exisiting labs, but this time Cockroach would have to work from the rainforest. Higher demands of the products led to Pablo building more storage facilities and expanding his distribution networks, this gave him a famous reputation. The reputation came with money to do whatever he wanted. Pablo bought many houses, secret hideouts, cars, helicopters, etc. Apart from being a drug lord, Pablo was family oriented as he loved his wife Tata, kids and mother.He had so much wealth that he buried them in walls, graves, under the chairs and most were eaten by rats.
Subsequently, an increase in the flow of cocaine to the United State could only mean one thing, Washington was never going to fold their hands and act blind. The DEA quickly sent a team to Colombia to investigate the issue, this brings us to one of the best pairing in the history of the world Steve Murphy and Javier Pena. The mission was for the both agents to work together with the Colombian authorities led by the great Colonel Carrilo to halt the excessive flow of cocaine into the United States.
Meanwhile Pablo had become a popular figure to the people in Colombia as he was donating to the poor, building schools and hospitals, etc. These actions led him to run for a position in the legislative arm of government. Pablo's plan was to start off from that arm and eventually become the president one day but that was crushed during his swearing- in as informations of his business and cartel was leaked to the public. Pablo respectfully stepped down, trashing all the claims but he revenges by killing all those involved. The aftermath of a failure political carrier changed Pablo into becoming a notorious drug lord,he was ready to unleash violence on anyone in his way. DEA agents Murphy and Javier had much to deal with, including finding out the corruption in the government ranging from bribing of the police and top military personnel to withholding of key informations.
Carillo decides to go after the second in command to Pablo which is his loyal cousin Gustavo. Gustavo wasn’t a mere family member, he was the brain behind most decisions made in the cartel, he had all the records of dealings by the cartel. Carillo’s plan was to tortune Gustavo and make him give up the location of Pablo who had been moving from one location to another. Gustavo refused to give out the information and was tortured to death by the police secretly. The news of Gustavo’s death had reached Pablo, the thought of his failed political ambition clouded his mind too and the United States of America proposed a new extradiciton treaty and communism fight was top on his list of problems.
Pablo wasted no time in replying the country as he lauched several attacks in the country resulting in the deaths of his people including ambushing Colonel Carillo for killing his cousin Gustavo. Pablo was to be stopped at all cost- this was quickly followed by intense action by the DEA and Colombian authorities which proved abortive until Pablo was able to make a deal to build his own prision which he called "La Cathedral". This prision was more of a luxury home and when he was ready to leave, Pablo escaped from the prison without the Colombian army doing anything to him out of fear. Following the prision break, Pablo still had the support of his cartel members, he went into hiding to gather more time and resourses to face the government authorities as he requested to be transported around the city in the trunk of a taxi, to avoid police checks. He was making rare appearance and donating money to his community to still have the people's favour.
Violence was on the increase as Pablo cartel had clashes with the police causing tensions and insecurity in the country. Javier decides to go old fashioned way by cutting a deal with Escobar's rivals, the Cali cartel who offered to bring back a secret group called “Los Pepes” to destroy Pablo's organization. Pablo's power was beginning to reduce as the once famous man with so many soliders to fight for him had almost none left, he had sent his family away to another country for safety but they were quickly stopped at the airport by efforts of Murphy and brought back to Colombia in the custody of security forces. This made Escobar furious and confused as he had called the German embassy threatening them, if anything should happen to his family but to no avail. It was later discovered that he was making radio communications with his family secretly, the mission was to discover where the signal was coming from and capture Pablo. The efforts of DEA technical team made that possible by tracking the signal to the house Pablo was hiding, they attacked the house killing the last solider with him, Pablo was shot twice while trying to run on the roofs top but was finished off by a Colombian Officer named Trujilllo who shot him and screamed Viva Colombia
[Source] The death of Pablo spread like wildfire all over the country with citizens celebrating the death of the man who went from hero to terror while for his family were left in pain and agony.
MY RATING The movie Narcos did justice to the actual life of the man called Pablo Escobar, it showed his life as a grown man who had a family and cared about nothing else in the world apart from them. He was an illegal business man who was aware of that but lost his direction with desires to go into Politics. The Political space was rather too soon for the drug lord and most importantly the death of his cousin Gustavo affected him badly. There are a lot of lessons to take away from the series.
I will rate the movie a 8.5/10
