Pun Salad

One for the "Wish I liked it better" classification.

Bryan Cranston moves to the other side of the drug war here, playing real-person Robert Mazur, an undercover agent for US Customs and the DEA. He poses as a money launderer, and the movie details how he wormed his way into the workings of the Pablo Escobar drug cartel.

The standard tropes of the genre are here. Mazur feels some pangs of sympathy for the drug lords he's working to imprison. (They are family guys, just like him!) He has a fake wife, which causes issues for his real wife. The criminals are naturally suspicious, and willing to shoot people on the merest suspicion that they're … doing exactly what Mazur is doing.

The movie is set in the 1980's, there's also a (tedious) political angle involving Reagan, the CIA, Contras, "Just Say No", etc. Drug-smuggler-turned-informant-turned-corpse Barry Seal shows up, fictitiously getting murdered in front of Mazur. CIA hit? Maybe!

On the plus side: the great John Leguizamo has a meaty role. Wish the whole movie had been about his character.