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.
Comment
04/24/09
Cocaine Cowboys (2006)
69
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:49
Fresh:34
Rotten:15
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: As frenetic, thrilling, and lacking in subtletly as its drug of focus...and just as likely to prompt some hard questions after it's gone.
Runtime: 1 hr 58 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: The cocaine trade of the 70s and 80s had an indelible impact on contemporary Miami. Smugglers and distributors forever changed a once sleepy retirement community into one of the world's most... [More]
Director: Billy Corben
Reviews for Cocaine Cowboys
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.
03/06/08
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11/24/07
Grisly crime scene snaps accompany the story, which makes Miami Vice look like a tea party and Florida like hell on earth.
11/23/07
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.
11/23/07
Top CriticAt 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.
11/23/07
Without narration, the doc has scant moral compass, its very title celebrating the machine gun-wielding mercenaries involved.
11/23/07
Too often the film crosses the line between recording his subjects' illegal activities and aggrandising them.
11/23/07
It’s the sort of glamour-meets-violence drugs-crime story on which lads’ mags thrive: unqualified, over-reverent and hysterical.
11/22/07
Fast-paced and fascinating, but a little too frenetic for its own good.
11/03/07
Top CriticRich in detail and fascinating characters.
03/01/07
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01/19/07
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.
12/08/06
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.
12/07/06
The Jan Hammer music on the soundtrack works overtime to assure us that Cocaine Cowboys is the real, nastier version of Miami Vice
12/01/06
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11/18/06
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11/11/06
This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure.
11/10/06
It's watchable, but like gorging on every rotten issue of the old Confidential magazine.
11/10/06
Forget Scarface and Miami Vice. Cocaine Cowboys is the real deal -- a down-and-dirty look at the high living and illegal drugs that dominated south Florida in the 1980s.
11/10/06
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