Escobar: Paradise Lost Review

Drug dealer, ruthless killer, beloved folk hero, Columbian “King Of Cocaine” Pablo Escobar is a fascinating figure who has, with various long-in-development pics, frustrated filmmakers as much as he did the authorities in their attempts to pin him down. So kudos to actor-turned-first-time writer-director Andrea Di Stefano for actually making this film, though his decision to focus on Josh Hutcherson’s naive surf-bum instead of Del Toro’s mesmerising criminal is bewildering. It’s less about the loss of innocence than about the discovery of stupidity — god, he’s an idiot — and the unsurprising white-boy-abroad story is made all the more exasperating for having one of crime’s greatest characters so often out of frame.