Agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) is an expert in undercover work and, despite being offered retirement he takes on another job chasing a drug cartel who are money laundering their cash through the US banking system but instead of taking the usual approach of chasing the drugs Mazur tries chasing the money to get to the big fish and finds much more success which brings about the birth of Bob Musella, an alias he uses to gain access to their world. Running with the cartel brings it’s own pressures however and when the job begins to leave his family in the line of danger the stakes are raised and Mazur is torn between his personal and professional lives as they begin to merge into one.

We see very early that Mazur is a man that will go the extra mile to complete his mission but we also see that he is a family man who quite obviously loves his wife Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey) and kids so much so that when he is undercover he refuses to be unfaithful or participate in the taking of narcotics even though it potentially hampers the strengthening of his undercover persona. When he is partnered with Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) who is much more of a seat of your pants guy against Mazurs’ methodical approach it looks like the two will be unable to work together plus, when his principals force him to pretend he has a fiancée it requires a third party in the form of Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger) as his soon to be wife complicating things further but between the three of them they manage to worm their way into the Medellin cartel and when they show that they can be of use they are introduced to higher level members,  eventually managing to build up a relationship with Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt) a lieutenant of Pablo Escobar.

Whenever I see a movie in this genre, especially about undercover work, I find it very difficult to remove it from the classics such as Donnie Brasco or The Departed so there tends to be a high bar set and it is no different here. It’s a good film but it’s not a classic because we’ve seen it all before and it has been done better. It’s not that there are not some good tense scenes, there are moments when their lives are on the line and there are situations where one wrong word will bring their façade falling down, throw in the fact that Javier Ospina (Yul Vazquez) never warms to Mazur so with his instable personality coupled with his mistrust leave their meetings on a knife edge but the sense of danger never really comes across on screen in the way I expected it should given the situation.

The saving grace for the movie comes in the form of the performance of the three agents, Kruger is excellent as the rookie field operative who takes to the role like a fish to water, Leguizamo gives arguably, his best screen performance as Abreu and while it is not his best role, Cranston solidifies his position in the top echelon of the industry with a great lead performance. Watch out for the restaurant scene where he is having dinner with his wife which was the best couple of minutes in the whole movie for me.

Also keep your eyes peeled for two interesting performances in small roles with both Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, who you will remember as Nidge from Love /Hate and appearing as Mazurs work colleague Steve Cook and Joe Gilgun, who played Woody in This Is England, as Mazurs go to man for inside knowledge, Dominic. It was good to see two really good actors from this side of the water appear in a big Hollywood film.

If you like crime dramas then you will enjoy it but despite the ‘based of a true story’ links and the seriousness of the situation, the lack of palpable tension and suspense leave you feeling a bit empty upon the conclusion of the movie.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 Out Of 10