Film review: ‘COCAINE BEAR’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

Expectations would understandably be low for a film entitled Cocaine Bear. While this ‘nature on the rampage’ horror/comedy runs out of puff three quarters of the way in, it offers a little more entertainment and slightly higher production values than we might have expected.

The story is very loosely based on real events that took place in 1985 when a drug cartel’s plane crashed and scattered an enormous stash of cocaine throughout the Chattahoochee Forest in Georgia. Allegedly, a black bear consumed some of the coke and sadly died. This is where the film departs from reality as the bear in this case lives, gobbles almost a plane load of the white powder and goes on a coke-fuelled killing spree. Chomping it’s way through backpackers and park rangers, it then sets its sights on low-level criminal henchmen Daveed (O’Shea Jackson) and Eddy (Aiden Ehrenreich) who have been despatched by boss Syd (Ray Liotta) to fetch the drugs. At the same time nurse Sari (Keri Russell) begins a perilous search for her daughter who has been abducted by the crazed bear.

This film is largely played for laughs with over-the-top action and ridiculous dialogue between the bumbling criminals. Some of the bear attacks are, however, pretty ferocious and the gore may be a little confronting for squeamish viewers.  The droll, yet mostly juvenile comedy works for a little while but the script runs out of comic ideas pretty quickly.  Also, some of the cartoonishly exaggerated performances – including Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson, as a kooky wildlife activist – start to grate.

Director, Elizabeth Banks provides a more aesthetically appealing film than we might anticipate from one built on such as trashy concept. She makes effective use of the sprawling national forest, capturing a sense of space and occasionally depicting some striking landscapes.

Banks also avoids demonising nature (too much) and elicits some sympathy for the bear as an innocent – if scarily destructive – victim of evil drug dealing humans.  The real monster here is Ray Liotta’s criminal thug Sid.  While Liotta commits to the role and does a decent job of making Syd a believably dislikeable fiend, it’s a little sad that Cocaine Bear was his last film.

For a while, Cocaine Bear almost qualifies as a guilty pleasure but in the end it’s just another of those ‘title describes the entire film’ trash fests, so we shouldn’t become too excited that it’s not as bad as expected.

Nick’s rating: **1/2

Genre: Action/ horror/ comedy

Classification: MA15+.

Director(s): Elizabeth Banks.

Release date: 23rd Feb 2023..

Running time: 95 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

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