In the past decade there's been much coverage of Escobar's life in film and television. If it's "El Patron del Mal", "Narcos", "Paradise Lost" even "Blow" or the recent "American Made". There are plenty of good and interesting adaptations of the real life events which involved Escobar. So the question is if there even was anything else to tell? Well, "Loving Pablo" is based on the book by reporter Virginia Vallejo and it focuses on her relationship with Pablo. It's pretty much told from her perspective and what she had to deal with by knowing the man. Sure, that's another angle to go with. To be honest, I only got curious when I saw which people were involved in the making. Spanish director/writer Fernando León de Aranoa takes the helm. I highly enjoyed his film "Mondays in the Sun", so I know he's a competent filmmaker. And then of course we got Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz as the two main characters. I thought their chemistry and interactions in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" were fantastic. With this in mind there had to be some merit. After watching it I ultimately think that the film is a mixed bag. There things to enjoy, but after all the "Narcos"-shows it does fall in to the "Been there, done it all" realm.The biggest problem is that it's in the English language. I know that Bardem, who also produced, was actively trying to convince many studios for it to be in Spanish. But none of them were willing to give them the green-light unless it was more international so it could appeal to a wider audience. The film suffered greatly because of that. They could still have spoken English whenever there's interaction with characters from the United States, but a good deal of authenticity is lost. And frankly, it was distracting to me. It's not bad filmmaking wise. León de Aranoa utilizes many long takes where he finds creative camera angles. The build-up of tension is executed well. As soon as the intense man-hunt begins about half way through, then momentum is not lost. I liked that there's a way to understand the motives and human sides of Pablo. Yet in the next scene you are immediately frightened of him again. Bardem's resemblance to Escobar is uncanny. Like Charlize Theron so amazingly did in "Tully", Bardem's physical transformation makes him fade away. That added a great deal for the immersion. When he appears you forget you're watching the actor. But then again, when he starts conversing in English I'm left underwhelmed. Because if it was in it's authentic language, it could have been so, so, so much more affective. Cruz is also fantastic at what she does. Her character changes quite a bit throughout the story. Going from curious and happy to hardened and emotionally unstable. You get that she loved Pablo, but hated Escobar. That is presented clearly.If you've already seen the shows on Netflix and so on, then you're not missing much. That's sad when you have great talent at hand and a director who has a good flair of how to create unnerving scenes. I wanna highlight the camera work again. Many set-pieces have a good use of blocking, light and inventiveness to make everything look less lazy. It's a movie made by people who know what they're doing filmmaking and performance wise, but it was made under unfortunate circumstances. With one mistake that made the whole project suffer. It's the same story of Escobar again, yet you get to understand him and Vallejo's relation. And more importantly why she loved and hated him at the same time. If you wanna see Escobar's life from that perspective, then check it out for curiosity. I wanna give it merit where merit is due, but I was left disappointed.

What's worse? The drug dealer, or the drug dealer's whore? That's what this is. The story of his most ardent mistress. Are we meant to feel sorry for her? Is she meant to be sympathetic when she was nothing more than a prostitute for the world's biggest drug dealer? She was complicit in what Escobar did. She knew what was going on, yet, her choice was to act as if nothing was wrong. What's worse, the people who do the crime or the ones who willingly profit from it? There's so much wrong with this movie:* It needs subtitles, as someone else pointed out, why have Spanish actors try to speak English and then with accents so thick that you have to listen to the dialog 3-4 times to understand even a single sentence? * Penelope Cruz was not a good choice. She is past the age of doing hot and young. Motherly, sure, but not a hot young thing that she still thinks she is. She just didn't pull it off * If you're going to cast a great actor like Javier Bardem in the role, how about you not ask him to speak in unintelligible English? He's shown that he can speak English very well in other English-focused movies, but apparently the director thought frustrating the audience with really think accents was a good idea. It wasn't.The acting is just bad. The action is just bad. The movie is 2 hours too long.

A journalist strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Despite the alright perfomances from both Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem 'Loving Pablo' is a really dull and boring biography that pretty much says the exact same things for the same person that other films have said better or portrayed. Plus the running time could have been shorter in my opinion as well since there's lots of boring conversations with the characters and basically lots of dull dialogue as a whole. I would recommend 'Blow' or 'American Made' even tho Escobar has a small role they tell a better and more focused story plus much better perfomances from the cast as well. (4/10)

Loving Pablo has certainly moments of guilty pleasure but leaves an empty feeling when reaching the end. This is the story of the rise and fall of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The very clever pairing of Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz as the strongly larger-than-life couple gave this production a shot at the international box office before it will go to smaller screens. Very much action-packed, Loving Pablo marks a turn towards the mainstream for Fernando Leon de Aranoa, the Spanish writer-director best known for social and political dramas. What ends up holding the film down to its level of superficial glitz is being adapted from Vallejo's novel/memoir Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar. The story is told almost on that basis and that's the min limit.