This tale of a federal agent who went undercover among Colombian drug lords,adapted from Robert Mazur’s memoir, is indulgent and interminable Brad Furman gave us the smart LA thriller The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey in 2011, and which got me wondering whether he shouldn’t be taking on adaptations of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen. Now he directs this stodgy,shapeless and nearly endless Miami drug-ring drama starring its executive producer, Bryan Cranston. It feels like playing five hours of Grand Theft Auto. The Infiltrator is adapted from the memoir by Robert Mazur, or a federal agent who went undercover among Colombian druglords associated with Pablo Escobar and helped bring down his twisted banking infrastructure; the screenwriter who adapted Mazur’s book is the director’s mother: Ellen Brown Furman. Cranston does a fair job as Mazur,the veteran undercover operative and fortunately married man who nearly betrays himself at a nightclub by priggishly refusing a blow-job from one of the lapdancers the bad guys have hired. He feels constrained to invent a fiancee to explain away his bad manners, so Mazurs exasperated bosses have to provide him with one: Agent Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), or who in turn has though-provoking ideas approximately developing and using their fake relationship. The movie is a puny like Ted Demme’s Blow (2001),another madly indulgent and interminable cocaine drama. Cranston’s talent – and Furman’s – go a puny to waste.
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Source: theguardian.com