The Infiltrator movie review & film summary (2016) | Roger Ebert (2024)

There will hardly be a single review of “The Infiltrator” thatdoes not make reference to its Bryan Cranston irony—he became famous for playing the brains behind a powerful drug ringon “Breaking Bad," and now portrays a real-life federal agent who went undercover to bring down the narcotics empire of infamous kingpinPablo Escobar. It is both an intriguing hook and an impressive performance, butnot enough to overcome the familiarity of the material. Consideringthat this is a story of a man in a situation where even the most benign situationsare fraught with intense peril bubbling just beneath the surface, it is alittle disappointing that the film itself never quite demonstrates a similardegree of danger.

When we first see federal agent Robert Mazur (Cranston) in 1986,he is working undercover on a drug bust that almost goes sideways when the wirehe is wearing begins to burn a hole in his chest. Although the injuries that hesustains from that excursion are enough to earn him an early retirement tospend with his wife, Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey), and their two kids, he still wantsto stay on and eventually hits upon a genius move in the war on drugs. Inthe past, the cops and feds have been going after the drugs themselves, andwhile halting the shipment of a few hundred pounds of cocaine may look good forthe cameras, the ugly reality is that there's much our there that anything seized can be replaced on the streets in no time at all. Mazur’s ideais to instead focus on going after the money itself, on the basis that if he cantap into how the dealers are laundering the insane amounts of cash beinggenerated, he could possibly follow that trail all the way up to the kingpinslike Escobar and use that information to build a case. To this end, hereinvents himself as Bob Musella, a seemingly upright businessman with theability to launder hundreds of millions in drug money by funneling it into alabyrinth of business investments.

Sure enough, with his glad-handing manner and patina of success,Mazur/Musella is able to make contact with a couple of low-level members ofEscobar’s infamous Medellin cartel and they are suitably impressed enough tohelp him work his way up through the ranks, eventually meeting and befriendingtrusted Escobar lieutenant Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt). As he quietly andmethodically builds his case while playing the part of Musella to the hilt,Mazur is constantly aware that his performance has to be spot-on and that eventhe slightest slip can have unintended consequences. Early on in hisinfiltration, for example, Mazur, in an attempt to remain loyal to his realwife, begs off having sex with a stripper provided by one of his unsuspectingcontacts by claiming that he has a fiancee to whom he wants to be faithful.Eventually, this hastily conceived ruse results in Mazur being given his ownfederally issued fiancée in Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), another undercover agent—on her first mission in the field, noless—whose life depends on his ability to convince others that he is somethingother than what he actually is. Even as Mazur gets closer and closer to thefinal big bust, there is still the possibility that everything could blow up inan instant—Escobar money manager Javier Ospina (Yul Vasquez), for one, doesn’ttrust the newcomer from the first moment he sees him, and his skepticism hangsin the air like the blade of a guillotine.

The basic problem with “The Infiltrator” is that even though itis based on a true story, there is still nevertheless a been-there, done-thatquality to a lot of the events depicted. Ellen Brown Furman’s screenplay toooften plays like an amalgamation of “Scarface,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Departed”and any number of episodes of “Miami Vice,” and when it seems to begin movinginto somewhat more uncharted waters—such as a scene in which Mazur’s real andersatz wives wind up meeting—nothing comes of it. For his part, director BradFurman, whose previous credits include the forgettable likes of “The LincolnLawyer” and “Runner, Runner,” handles the material in a slick but impersonalstyle that gets the job done, I suppose, but never quite conveys the constantstate of danger that presumably defined Mazur‘s life undercover. Of course,considering that the film is based on Mazur’s own memoir, his fate is clearlynot in doubt to anyone privy to that information going in. But, even factoringthat in, there is too often a distinct lack of tension to the material,especially when one compares it to something like “Donnie Brasco,” which told asimilar real-life story of an undercover agent in constant danger of beingrevealed but which still managed to maintain a level of suspense throughout.

What does work in “The Infiltrator” is the impressive leadperformance by Bryan Cranston as Mazur. It's a tricky character to pull offbecause for large chunks of the film, he is essentially delivering twoperformances at the same time—besides playing Mazur, he is also playing Mazurplaying Musella—and for the film to have any chance of working, he has to becompletely believable in both roles. As it turns out, the years he spentplaying Walter White, a mild-mannered family man who transforms himself into avicious criminal, pay off further dividends here as Cranston is able toskillfully shift between the personas he is embodying without calling undueattention to them. In the single best scene in the film, his quicksilverability to go from affable to nasty is beautifully displayed when Mazur iscaught with his real wife by one of Escobar’s colleagues and forced tocreate a violent scene with a waiter in order to get out of the situationbefore too many questions are asked. It is a showy scene that might havebeen implausible in the wrong hands, but Cranston shifts gears from the mild tothe murderous so subtly and yet so violently that it takes your breath away towatch him do it.

Since “The Infiltrator” is one of the few serious-minded andadult-oriented major films to come out in a summer filled with the usual arrayof silly junk aimed at kids on summer break, I almost hesitate to come downagainst it. Again, it does have its worthwhile aspects, such as the strongperformance from Cranston and a well-played turn from the perenniallyunderrated Diane Kruger as the phony fiancée. And yet, the film as a whole justnever quite overcomes the inherent familiarity of its premise to become its ownunique thing. Those looking for a story equal to Cranston’s contributions to itare liable to come away from it feeling slightly disappointed.