There might be a great movie in the story of Robert Mazur, a U.S. Customs Agent who went undercover to work his way into the money laundering operation of Pablo Escobar’s Medellin drug cartel. Unfortunately, The Infiltrator has difficulty deciding whether the man going undercover or his operation is the more compelling story.
It’s understandable to see how director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) and screenwriter Ellen Brown Furman got themselves into this storytelling dilemma. The life of an undercover agent, especially one infiltrating his way into the country’s largest drug operation — run by arguably the most ruthless cartel ever known — is a fascinating one. Especially if the agent has a normal life, with a wife and daughter, that he’s trying to maintain while cavorting with drug lords at the finest hotels, restaurants and nightclubs.
To some, that might be the more intriguing side of Mazur’s story. How do you hang out with drug kingpins — surrounded by champagne, illicit drugs and women — then go home to tell your wife about your day, help your daughter with her homework, wash the dishes, wake up with everybody and get breakfast ready the next morning, and so forth? How do you spend most of your time acting as a person, presumably consumed with greed and little hesitation about associating with some of the world’s worst criminals, then try and flip a switch when you get home? Is one life inevitably going to bleed into the other? Will obligations to the real life prevent a full commitment to the fake one?
These are the scenes during which The Infiltrator is most engaging. Mazur (Bryan Cranston) chooses his new identity, Robert Musella, by finding a name at a cemetery with a similar ethnicity and birthdate. During a night out with some of the cartel’s money men, Musella has an opportunity to have sex with a stripper, but doesn’t want to betray his wife and declines. However, in doing so, he says he has a fiancée. To maintain his cover and make his story seem real, the agency then has to pair him with a female operative (Diane Kruger) to pose as his future wife. Mazur is worried that a rookie could end up in danger and jeopardize the operation, but she thrives in the role and helps Musella avoid suspicion.
The difficulty of leading a double life, especially in public, is demonstrated when Mazur takes his wife (Juliet Aubrey) out for their anniversary (which he clearly forgot about beforehand), only to bump into one of the cartel’s associates. Mazur suddenly has to become Musella in front of his wife — saying that she’s his secretary — by bullying the waiter and creating a big scene at the restaurant when the dinner supposedly isn’t going as he planned. Mazur’s wife is horrified at how her husband is acting, witnessing a side of him she’s never seen before, but what choice does he have? His cover is at stake, even if it means ruining a special occasion and alienating his wife.
But Mazur’s greatest internal dilemma develops when he befriends the man in charge of Escobar’s money laundering operation, Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt). The relationship between the two soon becomes more than just business, as Alcaino sees Musella as someone who wants to enjoy the good life, but wants to create a relatively normal existence for himself and his family. He invites Musella and his fiancée to his home for dinner, where he demonstrates his love of cooking and difficulties in trying to maintain a normal life for his teenage daughter. Ultimately, Alcaino seems like a good man, albeit one who works within one of the world’s largest criminal operations. Mazur and his partner become close with Alcaino and his wife, all the while knowing that what they’re doing will destroy that life.
The Infiltrator is far less compelling when depicting what is arguably the far more intriguing side of Mazur’s undercover life. Mazur, U.S. Customs and the DEA create this convincing front as a lucrative banker who’s developed all of these business that he can launder the cartel’s drug money through, but how much of his daily routine has to be devoted to maintaining that facade? The movie includes plenty of scenes with Musella meeting with international bankers who have no trouble moving what they know is drug money, but look the other way because they’re working with millions and millions of dollars. Frankly, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in plenty of other films.
Yet Furman loses the grasp on the story by including too many of Escobar’s associates and various bank executives in these scenes. The characters are presumably important because they’re included in several scenes, and we see their faces multiple times. But their roles and names are often unclear. Why is this particular person important in Escobar’s operation? What does he do in relation to Alcaino? What roles do the bankers play with their respective institutions, and are they carrying out these transactions without the bank’s executive leadership knowing what’s truly going on? Or are we just supposed to assume that the men working with Musella and Alcaino are the chief executives of those banks and are fully comfortable working with a criminal element because of the money involved?
That side of the story isn’t quite as compelling as the human aspect to Mazur’s double life, which is likely why Furman ultimately puts more of the movie’s focus there. But the narrative becomes increasingly difficult to follow as more nameless, presumably important faces have clandestine meetings with Musella and help Escobar move staggering amounts of money.
Maybe that’s not supposed to be as important as Mazur potentially making any missteps with equipment or backstory that could blow his cover and threaten his life. And perhaps Alcaino is meant to be the sole embodiment of Musella’s inner conflict between money and men. But by clogging the story with all of these people, the story becomes cluttered and the climactic moment of the film doesn’t pack the punch that it surely could have.
The shame of it is that Cranston is very good as Mazur. This is the sort of lead role he deserves in movies, coming off his Breaking Bad breakout. He’s believable as a seemingly normal man whose chosen profession forces him to do some unethical things and associate with unsavory people. Yet Cranston also never quite gives the impression of someone who does this job because he loves the thrill of it. (John Leguizamo as Mazur’s partner conveys that sentiment far more convincingly, but his character has nothing to lose.) And he must love it on some level, otherwise why would he keep doing it when his wife wants him to stop, when his family life is at stake? But that’s more of an issue with the script than Cranston’s performance.
Maybe Mazur’s story ultimately isn’t as cinematic as Furman and the film’s producers would have liked to believe. Perhaps it would have been better served as a limited series on TV, which would allow both sides of the narrative to be explored in greater depth and allow the drama to compensate for the lack of action. It would have been a mistake to insert big action set pieces into the story when that’s not what really happened (though one of the trailers try to make the movie seem more exciting than it truly is). Yet there are plenty of times when it feels like something needs to happen. Give us a shootout. Show us some more ruthless murder. But that’s probably not what Mazur encountered during his operation. As intriguing as his story is, it doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie.
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