Normally I like to preface each movie I review but Cocaine Bear needs no introduction. Famously based on the true story of a bear in 1985 ingesting cocaine after a drug smuggler dumped an estimated 880 pounds of coke in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Park. Anyone going into this movie with any expectations besides watching a (CGI) bear wreak havoc zooted out of its gourd is sorely mistaken.
As I said before, the movie is about a drug smuggler dumping a ton of cocaine out of a plane over a forest, where a bear starts eating the bags and getting loaded. Cocaine Bear follows a couple of storylines: a mother trying to find her daughter and friend, a drug lord and his crew trying to recoup their coke, and a cop looking to catch them all. I thought there was too much going on here beyond the bear. The mother (played by Keri Russell) felt like she was there to soften a story that should’ve just focused on the drug dealers and the cop. There were just too many characters involved which made the movie jump around too much.
The movie was more focused on comedy than telling a gritty drug movie. That’s fine with me, I mean the whole reason for the movie is a bear actually was found with cocaine in its system, everything else is just fluff. It’s something that just seems too absurd to be true and hard to treat too seriously. And to that end, the movie did have some pretty solid humor mixed in. I’m not a big laugh guy when I watch a movie but a few jokes got a chuckle out of me. It did feel too campy at times, but it comes with the territory.
The action was honestly mediocre, which was kind of disappointing to a sicko like me. A lot of times when the Cocaine Bear attacked someone, it did so off-screen, only showing the aftermath and people’s reactions. There was a decent amount of blood spilled by the Cocaine Bear, and a high body count will always keep me invested. Ray Liotta got what I say was the best action of the movie just because it was on screen. Speaking of Ray Liotta, first off a massive rest in peace to him. I believe this was his last role before he passed and he was a delight to watch not just here but in all the movies I’ve seen. He played the drug lord but blended the cutthroat nature with some well-placed humor. I don’t think anyone’s performance really stood out but everyone seemed to have bought into the tone of the movie.
The last thing I’ll say is there were some questionable editing decisions. Every so often there would be these brief flashbacks that felt incredibly unnecessary. I got a little upset because they were just like inconsequential little add-ons at first but the last one showed a body of a character we had met and he was easily the most brutalized corpse of the bunch. I want to see the bear mess him up, not just see him tossed in because the story forgot about him. But when you show me a bear taking a bump off a severed leg, I can’t stay mad for long.
Final Thoughts
Cocaine Bear is a fun movie. I don’t know if I can say if it’s good or not, but this movie had the audience at my theater humming the entire time, which felt like its goal. It felt like a movie that everyone involved with it had fun making this movie and it resonates. I recommend the watch.
