The film is about the city of Miami, which was attacked in the early 1980s for the invasion of Colombian cocaine princes. In this film, director Billy Corbin presents a real look at the abuse of cocaine in the city that was once a real drug war in Miami.
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.
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.
The Jan Hammer music on the soundtrack works overtime to assure us that Cocaine Cowboys is the real, nastier version of Miami Vice
Times (UK)
November 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.
At half the length it would have been twice as good, but nevertheless it stokes a nostalgia some may have for a magic period in Miami history when it was ever so briefly the American Casablanca.
Grisly crime scene snaps accompany the story, which makes Miami Vice look like a tea party and Florida like hell on earth.
Houston Chronicle
November 10, 2006
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.
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.
Time Out
November 22, 2007
It's the sort of glamour-meets-violence drugs-crime story on which lads' mags thrive: unqualified, over-reverent and hysterical.
