Director Tom Furman brings to the screen the true story of Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston), a deep cover agent who infiltrates the Medellín drug cartel in the 1980’s and finds corruption in one of the biggest banks in the world in this neon soaked ode to the drug kingpin film genre.

Its hard to believe sometimes that its been almost a decade since Breaking Bad first hit the airwaves and reinvented the public’s perception of Bryan Cranston. Cranston’s chemist turned drug kingpin Walter White became a latter day Scarface for the millenial set and defined the crimelord genre for this generation. Its no surprise that Cranston has found success on the big screen since the series has left the airwaves in films like Drive and The Lincoln Lawyer. Cranston excels at playing the man with conflicted morality in the face of the illicit riches that the drug trade can bring and he revisits that familiar territory in the new Tom Furman film, The Infiltrator.

The Infiltrator is set in the wild wild west of the 1980’s drug trade: Miami, Florida. Though its based on a true story, the film hits many of the same beats as defining films of the genre such as the 1983 Brian DePalma film Scarface, 2006’s Cocaine Cowboys, and the 2001 Ted Demme crime biopic Blow. Cranston plays a federal agent named Robert Mazur; a career undercover agent but also a devoted father and family man. Mazur is injured while working undercover as a low level snitch and is offered the opportunity to retire with full benefits. However, Mazur doesn’t want to stop when the drug war in Florida is so bad that law enforcement is renting refrigerated trucks from Burger King to keep the number of dead from the drug trade on ice. Mazur picks up on a tip passed to him by fellow agent Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) that there is an opportunity to infiltrate the drug trade by following the money trade of the Medellín cartel. Mazur reinvents himself as a made man named Robert Musella to present himself to the cartel as a means of laundering their massive amounts of money through his supposedly legitimate businesses. Along the way, he discovers the Panamanian bank he is investing most of the ill-gotten drug cash he has been funneling, BCCI, is completely corrupt and potentially his key to taking down the head of the Cartel; Pablo Escobar himself.

The film largely works because of Cranston’s skill and experience in playing a man who is playing a darker character to a different audience; not unlike the difference between Walter White and Heisenberg in Breaking Bad. Cranston’s ability to become Musella, a playboy with a darkside, while at the same time being the straight lased Mazur, who loves his wife and family and would enver step out on her, is what allows the movie to work. Mazur is deeply loyal to Leguizamo’s Abreu and his security man Dominic (played by Joe Gilgun aka Preacher’s Cassidy), but also to his wife Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey). This is tested as he gets dragged deeper into the world of corrupt financiers and befriending cartel higherups like Benjamin Bratt’s Roberto Alcaino. Mazur and Alcaino’s relationship feels very much like something out of Breaking Bad and it works very well in showing how divided Mazur is becoming as he gets deeper in the web of infiltrating the Cartel.

That being said, The Infiltrator doesn’t really have a lot going on in terms of plot structure and tension. We don’t have celebrity cameos ala The Big Short explaining exactly what Mazur as Musella is doing to launder the money or why he’s so successful so quickly aside from an accidental discovery that BCCI is corrupt and needs more money to launder. Mazur introduces his aunt to Bratt’s Alcaino as a faux high end real estate person (played very memorably by Olympia Dukakis; however, it seems to not really contribute much to the plot). Neither does the introduction of a faux fiancee played by Inglorious Basterds‘ Diane Kruger; it serves to show how much of a straight arrow Mazur is which becomes more and more difficult to believe as the film goes on (the film is based on Mazur’s autobiography as well). The audience knows that Mazur will get his man eventually and the film doesn’t have the personal tension between characters that American Hustle has nor does it present the potential of Mazur being seduced by the high end life of crime he’s pretending to live, or even present a potential corrupt character ala Narc. However, the solid acting work and neon blue soaked cinematography add a lot to creating a sense of cool and 80’s ambiance to the film; even if the film is a bit lacking in terms of narrative and dramatic tension.

Overall, The Infiltrator is a solid crime genre set piece and a good companion piece to 2001’s Blow or Cocaine Cowboys in terms of wanting to see another piece dealing with the people helping bring drugs to the US through Florida in the mid 1980’s. Cranston makes the film work and is always great to watch work on screen. The Infiltrator not The Departed or Goodfellas, but seems like it had the potential to get to that point but just didn’t get quite there.