Movie Review
Siddharth Martis
2.5 / 5
The Infiltrator is a film directed by Brad Furman and is written by Ellen Brown-Furman. It stars Bryan Cranston, John Leguizamo, Diane Kruger, and Benjamin Bratt, along with Amy Ryan and Juliet Aubrey.
This need not have been a problem if writer, Ellen Brown-Furman wasn’t tasked with scripting it. Being a first time writer on such a large project, Brown-Furman struggles to maintain a grip on her morally ambiguous characters, ultimately reducing the film’s rich and thoroughly nuanced roots into a droll and tedious drama that is as disastrously uneven as it is tonally jarring.
Bereft of well-earned thrills, thought- provoking ideas, or even hearty laughs, The Infiltrator makes its dense 127-minute runtime painfully aware to the audience. During this time, I was also made aware of the fact that the film is almost salvaged thanks to the arduous work done by both Bryan Cranston’s powerhouse performance and Brad Furman’s taut direction.
Heisenberg demonstrates, once again, that he is a tremendous force to reckon with as he asserts his dominance in every scene, asserting him as the film’s largest asset. Subtle and at times subdued, Cranston delivers his best cinematic performance to date, proving once and for all that he works best in the drug trade.
Brad Furman compliments Cranston's refined performance with directorial techniques that incorporate violent camera movements and constant angle shifts. This creates an enthralling juxtapose that really manages to captivate the audience's attention and somewhat distracts from the troublesome script.
Set amidst the lavish excess of the 1980’s, The Infiltrator tells the story of undercover U.S. Customs agent Robert Mazur (Cranston) AKA Robert Musella, who became a pivotal player for drug lords cleaning their dirty cash. He traded on mob connections to become the confidant to scores of the international underworld, and the bankers who enabled them. Laying his life on the line, he infiltrated the globe’s largest cartels and discovered just how deep into society their influence extended. The operation reeled in key players in a chain stretching all the way to Pablo Escobar. Their arrests would lead to the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and shake the underground economy to its core.The Infiltrator takes pride in its fact checking ability, while not accounting for viewer entertainment, making for an emotionally hollow if completely factual retelling of a genuinely intriguing story. It also expects admiration for its craft, while not really adding anything of merit to the undercover cop sub-genre.
This need not have been a problem if writer, Ellen Brown-Furman wasn’t tasked with scripting it. Being a first time writer on such a large project, Brown-Furman struggles to maintain a grip on her morally ambiguous characters, ultimately reducing the film’s rich and thoroughly nuanced roots into a droll and tedious drama that is as disastrously uneven as it is tonally jarring.
Bereft of well-earned thrills, thought- provoking ideas, or even hearty laughs, The Infiltrator makes its dense 127-minute runtime painfully aware to the audience. During this time, I was also made aware of the fact that the film is almost salvaged thanks to the arduous work done by both Bryan Cranston’s powerhouse performance and Brad Furman’s taut direction.
Heisenberg demonstrates, once again, that he is a tremendous force to reckon with as he asserts his dominance in every scene, asserting him as the film’s largest asset. Subtle and at times subdued, Cranston delivers his best cinematic performance to date, proving once and for all that he works best in the drug trade.
Brad Furman compliments Cranston's refined performance with directorial techniques that incorporate violent camera movements and constant angle shifts. This creates an enthralling juxtapose that really manages to captivate the audience's attention and somewhat distracts from the troublesome script.