I not only saw the documentary, I lived it, I became a Metro Dade county police officer in Aug of 1980 and retired in 2002, I was on the scene of at least half the drug related killings pictured in the video, and a whole lot more that were not. As if that weren't enough, I also went to High school with the quintessential Cocaine Cowboy Mickey Munday, oddly enough I didn't make the connection till I watched this video 50 something years later, I recall him as a redheaded nerd who the girls wanted nothing to do with, if they had only known that one day he would be buying entire neighborhoods and burying trash bags full of 20s and hundreds.

The Miami that we know of today was built with drug money. Just reading that sentence can be downright depressing, but the story behind it is one that is oddly (maybe perversely) fascinating.Directed by Billy Corben, "Cocaine Cowboys" examines Miami's turbulent transition from a sleepy vacation town to a beachside Metropolis, financed by cocaine revenues and victims of a truly nasty drug war. At the forefront of the war was Griselda Blanco (whose death made recent headlines), crime family godmother who ordered the deaths of countless rivals. Using testimonials from several key figures in the importing of drugs, we get a detailed depiction of the violence that spilled onto Miami streets. What's staggering about the late 1970s (when the go-go party scene was in full swing in South Florida) is that while the rest of the United States was slogging through hard economic times, Miami was flourishing, due to the incredible infusion of cash into the city's economy. Key importers had so much money, they had no idea where to stash it, and actually buried it in piles in their backyards. Luxury cars were flying off the lots, and the scads of loose cash were eventually funneled into real estate, leading to the construction of Miami's brand-new glittering skyline. The insane materialistic excess of the time is part of what makes "Cocaine Cowboys" so seductive. But the party couldn't last forever, and the movie now moves into its downer of a second half. The nonstop nightlife gives way to violent shootouts, bloody mob hits, and a staggering pileup of bodies. Dade County had reportedly the highest murder rate in the United States. The situation would prove dire enough to demand presidential attention, and a new ramped-up brand of law enforcement was born, taking the fight back to Blanco and the Colombians."Cocaine Cowboys" is one big thrill, aided (in no small part) by flashy imagery and editing, and even a score by Jan Hammer that keeps us reminded of the coastal paradise patrolled by Crockett and Tubbs. To see the insane wealth of some of these guys is both intoxicating and worrisome, and Corben never lets that sinister sense of foreboding ebb, keeping just far enough away from glamorizing these lifestyles. A compulsively watchable documentary. 8/10

I lived in Freeport, Bahamas from 1980-1983. All television and radio was out of Miami and West Palm Beach, and Miami was only 30 minutes away on a 747. I often attempt to describe what it was like there to friends: the Haitian boat people, the Liberty City riots, the Mariel boat lift and the Colombian drug trade. But my anecdotes fall short of the mark. Prior to seeing "Cocaine Cowboys", the best I could do was tell them "watch 'Scarface'...with the exception of the final scene over-the-top hokey shootout, it was dead on." "Cocaine Cowboys" captures the true picture of the era there. Daily you would wake up, turn on the radio and get the body count: 3 men found in the trunk of a burning car; or a headless corpse found floating in a canal; or 4 men killed in a parking lot shootout, 2 civilians wounded in the crossfire. This was followed by an ad for Lanson's, a high end men's clothier, advertising a bullet proof men's dinner jacket, "What the best dressed Miamian is wearing." Driving down Flagler St. in Miami, you see a bus stop bench with an ad on the back: "Protectar usted y su familia" punctuated with pictures of an automatic pistol and a machine gun. The movie speaks for itself just like "Scarface". I have no doubt the individual narratives are accurate and non-hyperbolic. The movie does credit the cocaine "business" with cash infusion into the area and the resulting uplift of the overall economy. However, it omits the psychological impact on ordinary citizens, who saw little of the cocaine bucks: fear of getting caught in a crossfire and the depression of living in a combat zone. Also omitted from the storyline were some of the Colombian weapons innovations: the Colombians came up with armor piercing bullets and laser sighting long before the cops had them. Then the feds showed up en mass and the tide turned. I gave the movie a "9" only because it was a documentary and had no plot, no real acting. But if you wanted to know how it really went down then and there...this is your movie!

Right, let me begin by saying that the tagline of this film is wrong. 'The true story that inspired Scarface'. Um...isn't Scarface a remake of a film from the 30s? And wasn't the bulk of Scarface's writing and production already complete by the time this documentary really gets to any story in it's chronological order? If you like watching TV shows in which you're bombarded with endless montages of unsourced and random facts then this is for you. But seriously, I have seen better production values on Channel 5. Calling this TV quality stuff is an insult to TV. The editing is all over the place and it frequently looks like the filmmakers are trying to edit together a sentence that wasn't actually said. If you have seen the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer is interviewed on TV by Godfrey Jones then you'll know what I mean.Credit must be given to the crew for actually managing to track down the majority of the drug dealing scum and murderers for honest and open interviews. But with practically no archive footage to work with the film looks incredibly bland. It's also way too long and you'll be looking at your watch by the 80-minute mark.A sequel is in production (oh, lucky us) detailing the life of the Psycho Woman in charge of it all, but you'll excuse me if I have more interesting things to do, like licking the dust from the skirting board behind the radiator.