LOVING PABLO
PENELOPE Cruz looks awful.
The same can be said of Javier Bardem as the villainous drug lord Pablo Escobar in the title role of “Loving Pablo” a bio pic that dramatizes the love and life of the world’s most notorious cocaine kingpin, who unofficially controlled Bogota, with criminal tentacles interwoven throughout his native Colombia in the 1980s, before being hunted down and killed on a Bogota rooftop.
Cruz, youthful at 44, looks terrible in this film as TV anchor and presenter Virginia Vallejo whose memoir “Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar” was used as the foundation of this film. Vallejo strikes up a heated romantic relationship with Escobar during his rise in power (1983-1987) which terrorized all Colombia government officials with one political regime toppling after another to his gang’s murderous rampage.
Enter the US Drug Enforcement Agency and their main agent in charge: Peter Skarsgård as “Shepard” who is not just a few step behind Escobar.
Think more like a mile.
Shepard is unceremoniously dropped into Colombia, thinking perhaps it is Columbiums, Ohio, and is as completely inept as Skarsgård’s starch-filled performance which adds nothing to the plotline of “Loving Pablo.”
Like Cruz, Bardem looks awful as though a mad scientist had invented a “gravity gun” and used it on these two leading actors as you would a test rabbit. Their sagging faces look positively dreadful as is their acting abilities in retelling this sordid affair in Colombian history.
We start this bio-pic of “Loving Pablo” as the notorious gangster is just rising into prominence. His freewheeling use of motorcycle drive-by murders are all too familiar with local Cebuanos as Escobar puts out one contract after another “hit and run” attacks on lawyers, journalists and government officials which racks-up the dead bodies to unseemly levels.
Emerging from poverty onto the Colombian scene, Escobar is at first, a modern-day “Robin Hood,” freely doling out cash to local residents who have to live on the crumbs they find at a nearby garbage dump. Not only does Escobar immediately endear himself to the local Bogota community, he is also totally media savvy, wooing and flattering TV anchors, hence his seduction of Cruz’s Vallejo into a world of sex and drugs until she—like the D.E.A.’s Shepard—is doomed.
Escobar’s level of terrorism and violence had never been seen before as the Colombian Army and the Shepard’s’ D.E.A. are completely helpless.
Led around by the neck just as you would lead a Golden Retriever, Vallejo is likewise slapped around like a puppy who makes “do do” on the tile floor.
Escobar may play “nice nice” with the media but in an instant goes radioactive and off the wall crazy when the news media and government eventually turn on him and his criminal cohorts.
Pablo Escobar was one really bad guy and the slumping face, cheeks and jowls of Bardem adds to the overall depression of this movie which at best I would give a 3 on a 10 scale.
There are many reasons not to like this film.
“Loving Pablo” is an exceptionally violent movie which degrades women on purpose. The real life story of Pablo Escobar is so enriching a tale that its 123-minute running time does not do it justice.
Directed and written of the screen by Fernando León de Aranoa, “Loving Pablo” is simply a true story that cannot be reduced down to two hours and three minutes and would be better told over a 20-hour TV mini-series.
What a minute!
That is exactly what happened in 2015 and 2016 with the brilliant first (and second) seasons of “Narcos,” airing on Netflix.
Comprised of 10 episodes each season, “Narcos” tells the fully fleshed out life story of Pablo Escobar that this two-hour movie simply cannot.
Which is why, as I was watching “Loving Pablo,” my mind kept racing back to the much better, longer and more riveting small screen version of “Narcos” which offers a more compelling actor, Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar.
Perhaps it is that in some instances television can overshadow motion pictures and clearly so when it comes to retelling the life story of Pablo Escobar.
In retrospect, I would immediately recommend to anyone who is even remotely interested in the life and death of Pablo Escobar to dedicate a 20-hour block of their time and take in “Narcos” instead of this pale imitation.
The level of violence is actually higher (and gorier) in the long-form TV version and tells a “fuller” version of Pablo Escobar that is instead shoved into this two hour version in “Loving Pablo.”
Filmed in Colombia, “Loving Pablo” offers no meaningful reason to watch the every lovely Penelope Cruz nor the vicious presentation of Javier Bardem as Pablo Escobar.
Stay instead with the TV version found in “Narcos.”
You’ll be glad you did!
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