Cocaine Cowboys
Magnolia Pictures | Release Date: October 27, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
59
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
9
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Film ThreatK.J. Doughton
Traveling faster than a fat line of blow snorted from mirror to nose, Cocaine Cowboys is all rush and no crash. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
If "The Godfather" movies were based on real gangsters and some of them were still around to talk about the good old days, they might be as fascinating as the characters in Billy Corben's documentary about the cocaine import business in 1970s Miami. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
Ultimately, Cocaine Cowboys' lesson isn't that crime doesn't pay, but that it maybe pays too well. Read full review
75
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Cocaine cash financed Miami's renaissance, but the film never downplays the human cost at which that urban renewal was purchased. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Although the movie doesn't exactly romanticize the period, the film still generates a twinge of pride in viewers who lived in South Florida during that time -- and lived to tell about it. Read full review
70
VarietyRonnie Scheib
A rogues gallery of flamboyant gangsters paint an anecdote-rich portrait of the drug trade, while a steady stream of cops, coroners and crime reporters furnish social commentary. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
An exhaustive, exciting and ultimately exhausting history of how that white powder, and the Colombian crime lords who imported it by the hundreds of kilos, transformed the culture and economy of Miami, for good and for ill. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyTim Grierson
Cocaine Cowboys' pulpy entertainment value merely lures us into a grim, kaleidoscopic look at how one city was both destroyed and, ironically, eventually saved by some of the worst human beings to walk the Earth. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Cocaine Cowboys, which at times seems like it could have been edited by someone on coke, comes at you as a vast bloody river of underworld information. Read full review
60
Village VoiceLuke Y. Thompson
The story is fascinating, if a little overlong. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
In a sense it's a shame that Cocaine Cowboys is so obsessed by violence, because the film has interesting points to make. Read full review
60
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Cocaine is the most aggressively edited film in years: It pounds, it churns, it spurts, it spray-paints. Read full review
50
PremiereSara Brady
Cocaine Cowboys might work better as a miniseries for television; as it is, the two-hour running time is fatiguing and some of the later material gets lost in the onslaught. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneJessica Reaves
Cocaine Cowboys would be a great one-hour television piece. Unfortunately, it's a two-hour long documentary that recalls, in scrupulous, unnecessary detail, the rise and fall of Miami's role as the cocaine capital of America. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
After a while I wasn't sure whether I was learning about cocaine or ingesting it. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarrit Ingman
Before the cocaine economy, Miami was a sleepy seaside hamlet, a "virgin city" with a permeable border and largely unprotected coastline. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen Johnson
This is an ugly film, but with an undeniable allure. Read full review
30
The New York TimesJeannette Catsoulis
Cocaine Cowboys is a tabloid headline, a movie as oppressive and inarticulate as the lives it represents. Read full review
25
New York PostKyle Smith
There are a couple of grams of interesting stories about Miami's drug traffic in Cocaine Cowboys, but the good stuff is cut with 50 kilos of cinematic baking soda. Read full review
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