'The Infiltrator' is a slick piece of work, which suffers a little from the real-life protagonist's influence on undercover-cop dramas on film and TV over the past three decades. Many of the tricks employed by real-life protagonist Robert Mazur in taking down Pablo Escobar's drug-trafficking and money-laundering network in the '80s are familiar to us as tropes of this niche sub-genre ever since Michael Mann first used him as a consultant on 'Miami Vice'.
Art imitates life, providing a facsimile of life, in infinite recursion. What makes the film effective is Bryan Cranston's turn as the titular hero, though the narrowness of focus on the conflicted Mazur does leave Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo and, most notably, Benjamin Bratt somewhat isolated, and in need of character development. They are defined almost exclusively in terms of their specific relationship with Cranston – a shame, as a greater scope and more expansive historical context (one gets the impression, on occasion that this has been a conscious strategy to avoid classification as a period piece) might have turned a good, solid thriller – for all my gripes, still better than most crime dramas we've seen of late - into a genuinely great film. Cranston's performance is worth the ticket price by itself.
Art imitates life, providing a facsimile of life, in infinite recursion. What makes the film effective is Bryan Cranston's turn as the titular hero, though the narrowness of focus on the conflicted Mazur does leave Diane Kruger, John Leguizamo and, most notably, Benjamin Bratt somewhat isolated, and in need of character development. They are defined almost exclusively in terms of their specific relationship with Cranston – a shame, as a greater scope and more expansive historical context (one gets the impression, on occasion that this has been a conscious strategy to avoid classification as a period piece) might have turned a good, solid thriller – for all my gripes, still better than most crime dramas we've seen of late - into a genuinely great film. Cranston's performance is worth the ticket price by itself.