Escobar: Paradise Lost

2014 "Welcome to the family"
6.5| 2h0m| PG-13| en
Details

For Pablo Escobar family is everything. When young surfer Nick falls for Escobar's niece, Maria, he finds his life on the line when he's pulled into the dangerous world of the family business.

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Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
lallo-2 There are good movies and bad movies. This one to me is pathetic. Non sense, slow, it isn't the story of Escobar. Boring from the begin to the end with some scenes that you cannot believe have passed the quality check of the director. Really suggesting to the director to change job, maybe agriculture would be better.
TdSmth5 A group of Canadian good kids try to open up a surfing shop in some secluded beach near a jungle in Colombia. One of the kids, Nick, meets a beautiful local girl, Maria. They start dating and become a couple. The small town nearby gets one day a local clinic installed courtesy of a senator and benefactor...none other than Pablo Escobar, who is...Maria's uncle. Nick doesn't make much of it, but his friends warn him. One day some thugs, claiming to own the beach, threaten the Canadians. Later, the thugs have their dog attack Nick and he ends up with his arm injured.At a family party, Nick is finally introduced to Pablo, who takes an interest in his injury. Then the beach thugs end up hanging dead from a tree in the jungle. Nick marries the girl and lives on Pablo's ranch where he of course ends up seeing things he shouldn't. Pablo has occasional words with him, always somewhat nice but always sinister.Pablo has a justice minister killed and the government intensifies the manhunt for him. As a result the entire family, Nick now among them, has to constantly move, along with all the money, weapons, guards, hit men. That of course puts a strain on everyone. Nick's friends, his brother among them, basically disavow him.Eventually, Pablo decides to turn himself in to the authorities, but first he has to secure all his wealth. He loads up a bunch of SUVs with his money that will be driven to different location in the country. Only the most trusted people will drive. And he picks Nick to be one of those. The plan is for Nick to drive to some small town, meet up with a farmer who will direct him somewhere where Nick is to unload the crates, then he's to kill the farmer, drive to a restaurant and call him. Nick has never killed anyone so he isn't very thrilled with the mission but what choice does he have? When he reaches the town instead of a farmer, a teenage kid approaches him, a kid who is married and has a child. So come time for Nick to kill the kid he has even more doubts. He tries to reason with the kid who doesn't understand, he pulls out the gun, the kid runs, Nick catches up with him and offers to help him escape. But once they get to the kid's place, they realize Pablo's people got there before. And Pablo isn't about to leave any loose ties...Escobar: Paradise Lost isn't a movie about Escobar. It's a thriller about what it would be like for a peaceful outsider to end up by accident in Escobar's world. It's not clear how much time transpires in the movie. We get some historical bits, Escobar's stint as a senator, the assassination of the justice minister, and Escobar turning himself in. Geographically things are also messy. The beach, the jungle, Pablo's lairs are all a bit too close to each other. A more complicated problem for a movie that isn't about Escobar is that they hired Del Toro to play Escobar. And as always his performance is a bit too compelling for a secondary character. That said, his performance here isn't all that convincing. He gets the accent for the region fairly right but not entirely. His speech is too calculated, too threatening I think, after all, Nick is family and with his blessing. Claudia Hernandez is irresistibly beautiful and could pass for a Colombian girl, although why they didn't just hire one is odd since there is no shortage of stunning Colombian actresses. She also doesn't capture the accent all that well, but her gorgeous smile makes it all good. Josh Hutcherson does a good job as the naive foreigner who will have to face the ultimate dilemma about what he will do once he's in a life-threatening situation. Occasionally he overdoes the cluelessness though.Escobar: Paradise Lost is entertaining and the historical bits about Escobar give it depth and make for a more interesting movie.
urthcreature Great psycho-thriller, draws you right in. Loved the understated style, movie manages to suggest what's going on without resorting to grisly torture scenes and other clichés. Most violence is shown after the fact, not too graphic. (Of course not suitable for children.) Great performances, beautifully filmed. If you love Apocalypse Now / Last King of Scotland type films where a mysterious megalomaniac is glimpsed or gradually revealed through the eyes of an outsider, you will probably especially like it (in this case it is just glimpses of Escobar, on one hand the family man, adored by his supporters, and on the other a completely detached and ruthless psychopath.) Of course Benicio del Toro is incredible in the role of Escobar and all the cast are excellent. Unfortunately it seems the title gave some viewers/critics the expectation that the movie should be a biopic of Escobar, and the fact del Toro was so good in the role just left people wanting more. But it is a really good movie nonetheless.
xin The movie is definitely not as bad as the critics have said. For example, I don't see any POV problem. It might not satisfy some audience by telling the story from the perspective of a Canadian surfer boy. But it fits reasonably well with the theme of the movie and the true story it wants to tell. Besides, it makes it possible to tell the story of Pablo Escobar with a much lower budget than a real full scale bio piece on him would allow.It is obvious that the director truly loves his actors and actresses giving the amount of screen time he allows the main characters to play out their emotions. But unfortunately the emotional display was neither necessary to carry the main plot, nor does it contribute much the thriller aspect of the movie. It distracts the audience more from the main plot, and make the already weak plot even weaker.Talking about the plot, it is the weakest aspect of the movie. Half of the story is spent on events that are before the movie's inciting incident. The writer might think it is absolutely necessary for setting up the story and the characters. The truth is that it only shows the lack of skills of the writer at handling its plot.The movie is not really a linear piece as many of the reviews have claimed. There is only one real flash-back at the end of the movie which is put there in place of the real ending to create a more subtle and more literary ending. Most of the confusion is caused by the movie's choice of putting the real inciting incident at the beginning of a story, as an attempt to keep the audience's attention before delving into a backstory that covers half of the movie, an exact signal that the backstory does not belong there, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with the structure of the story. This choice of plot line might not be a bad one for a romantic movie or an art-house piece, but definitely should not be there for thriller. It makes the movie feel like a badly stitched together piece of two very different movies from completely different genres. I understand the creators of the movie want to create a contrast to convey a stronger message. But this is not a novel, or a play which is split explicitly into three acts, and the audience get to take a thirty minutes break. Keep one of the two as the main plot, and the other as a subtext, either one will be much better than what it is now.I would not recommend that the writer to go back to school to really learn how to tell a story, that would be too mean. But at least send the script to a real expert who would very likely have pointed out the flaw in the plot at very beginning, and subsequent rewrites might have guaranteed a much more successful movie.I am not sure how to comment on the acting. The movie is doomed by its plot from the beginning, there is not much the actors could have done to save it. The director made a reasonable choice, to give his stars enough freedom to create the characters. Unfortunately, when it is overdone it becomes too much a distraction and makes the plot even weaker.The only acting in the movie that really deserves accolades is from the actor who played Drango. Del Toro obviously had a lot of fun playing the character Escobar, but the end result is not proportionate to the amount of creative freedom he was given. Hutcherson did a reasonable good job at portraying the emotions of the pov character that fits the "innocence lost" theme of the movie reasonable well. But he needss a better command of how to use his body to convey his emotions. Acting is not carried out only by the muscles above the neck.