Benicio del Toro

Josh Hutcherson

Brady Corbet

Claudia Traisac

Carlos Bardem

Ana Girardot

Tenoch Huerta Mejía

Laura Londoño

Frank Spano

Micke Moreno

Elmis Castillo

Aaron Zebede

Andrea Di Stefano

Gilles Waterkeyn

Avril Carpentier

Moritz Borman

Miguel Ángel Faura

Luis Pacheco

Nadia Khamlichi

Agathe Dupuis

Isaac Torrás

Thi Thanh Tu Nguyen

Adrian Politowski

Michel Denis

Maggie Perlado

David Brenner

Thibaut Josserand

Frédéric Vallet

Thomas Duval

Yiniva Cardenas

Luis David Sansans

Pascale Béraud

Ronald Grauer

Christine Seznec

Alexandre Fleurant

Antonia Dauphin

Camila Arocha

Frédéric Le Louêt

Annette Kudrak

Gadou Naudin

Vincent Arnardi

Julien Perez

Del Spiva

Dimitri Rassam

Dominique Fiore

Carlos Conti

Odile Beraud

Guillermo Rosas

Maryline Monthieux

Marylin Fitoussi

Sylvain Lasseur

Denis Bedlow

Sébastien Marquilly

Max Richter

Bernardo Kenny

Thriller

Romance

Escobar: Paradise Lost

uFilm

Nexus Factory

Jaguar Films

Chapter 2 Roxbury

uMedia

Belgium

France

Spain

Benicio del Toro is a better Pablo Escobar than Javier Bardem, the same way Escobar: Paradise Lost is a better film about the drug lord than Loving Pablo – but the latter only marginally. Unlike Bardem, del Toro speaks Spanish throughout, except when addressing Nick Brady (Josh Hutcherson), which makes sense because Nick is Canadian. Moreover, most of the actors in Paradise Lost are Latino or Spanish, and their characters accordingly speak the language of Cervantes.

The problem here is that the movie plays like a remake of the Last King of Scotland – and is just about as faithful to reality. Nick has gone surfing in Colombia, where he meets María (Claudia Traissac), and it's love at first sight. Little does Nick know that María is Escobar’s ‘almost-like-a-daughter-to-me’ niece. Yada yada yada the young, wide-eyed foreigner is seduced by the superficially affable and charismatic sociopath, only to discover sooner rather than later that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Now, del Toro can conjure affability, charisma, and sociopathy at the drop of hat, and he doesn't need to be in every scene to steal the movie; conversely, he couldn't save the film even if he did appear in every scene, because the story isn't about him, so Escobar doesn't so much inhabit the movie as he hovers over it, like a bird of prey.

As for Nick and María, they are as make-believe as James McAvoy’s character in the Last King of Scotland. We don’t care what happens to them anymore than writer/director Andrea Di Stefano cares about what happens to Escobar, who literally and figuratively gets away with murder.

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ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST - Official Trailer - Now playing!