An explosive look at the cocaine wars that transformed Miami from God's Waiting Room to America's Riviera.
“Billy Corben's often hilarious, exuberant documentary practically celebrates the bloodbath that was Miami's cocaine heyday.”
“Such a buzz to watch — kinetic and absorbing, the documentary equivalent of Goodfellas.”
“A hyperventilating account of the blood-drenched Miami drug culture in the 1970's and 80s, the movie overflows with cops and coroners, snitches and smugglers, reporters and importers. Most resemble refugees from Scarface, and all talk a mile a minute… except for the dead bodies, of course.”
“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 Cocaine Cowboys.”
“All rush and no crash… Fascinating and edited for maximum impact, it packs the furious momentum and dramatic punch of a riveting feature film.”
“A rogues gallery of flamboyant gangsters paint an anecdote-rich portrait of the drug trade.”
“A pulse-pounding dossier of criminal high life (and lowlifes).”
“Bullets fly and dead bodies drop like whacked weeds in this startling documentary about the bad old days of the Miami drug trade”
“Unless you were a coke dealer in '70s or '80s Miami, it is safe to say that Cocaine Cowboys will blow your mind. Covering the wild years that took Miami from a provincial Southern town to a glamorous and ultra-violent Al Pacino set, Billy Corben's two-hour epic documentary dropped my jaw about five or six times, with innumerable eye-widenings filling out the gaps.”
“Though this film tells one of the most interesting and engaging (not to mention unbelievable – too unbelievable to be fiction) stories I've ever heard or seen, at times I could not just help but admire the sheer style of the film.”
“As sensational as Scarface and a lot livelier than that Miami Vice movie, Cocaine Cowboys vividly traces Miami's trajectory from sleepy retirement mecca to Blow Central, USA.”
“An exercise in blood-soaked nostalgia, a look back at an era (the late 1970s and early 1980s) when Miami was a bad and dangerous place to live.”