Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
New season of ‘Narcos’ resets drug war
The third season of the Netflix cocaine drama “Narcos” moves into a new chapter of America’s long-running war on drugs in the 1980s and ‘90s.
The end of last season brought the death of Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord, in a rooftop shootout in 1993. The first two years of the series chronicled the rise and fall of the colorful cocaine kingpin and the determination of two real American Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal) and Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook), to bring him down.
In real life, Peña and Murphy left Colombia after Escobar’s death, but in season three “Narcos” takes more liberties with the dramatization of the drug war with Peña, who did remain an active DEA agent, returning to the country to go after the Cali Cartel.
As Peña explains, the DEA took Cali’s help to get rid of the Medellín Cartel and Escobar, but now with their rivals gone the second-biggest drug organization simply moved up into the top spot.
The upshot was that there was no drop-off in the flow of cocaine into the United States. In fact, the Cali Cartel operated more efficiently than Medellín. They called themselves the Gentlemen of Cali and used more military precision in their smuggling movements. The drug lords also had a high-end surveillance network, comparing themselves to the Soviet’s KGB.
On the surface, Cali tried to appear as legitimate as possible. Its approach to violence was less flashy. While Escobar liked to advertise his kills to strike fear into his opponents’ hearts, his successors preferred to keep things quieter. Victims were bound up tightly with chicken wire and dropped in the river, Peña explains. When their bodies bloated, the wire would slice them up, providing food for fish and less of a chance for identification.
Season three of “Narcos” faces some challenges, however. First is replacing Escobar as the focus of the series. Wagner Moura had played the drug lord with flair, portraying him as more than a madman, even sympathetic at times.
With the series set in 1994, Peña is now in a supervisory position with agents Chris Feistl (Michael Stahl-David) and Daniel Van Ness (Matt Whelan) more on the front lines of the action.
But the Cali Cartel is more of hydra-headed opponent for the DEA. Peña, who had taken over the narration duties from Murphy, gives us an early quick rundown on the principals in the drug organization,
There is Pacho Herrera (Alberto Ammann), who is the head of distribution and security. He commands a band of loyal psychopaths — and he is gay. Pêpê Rapazote plays Chepe Santacruz Londono, the man in charge of Cali’s U.S. operation who is based in New York.
The leaders of the Cartel are brothers Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez. Miguel (Francisco Denis) watches over the money, and Gilberto (Damián Alcázar) does the planning.
In the first episode, the brothers have called a mass meeting of the organization. The reason is that Gilberto is pursuing a radical plan. He is putting in place deals that will legitimize the cartel in six months.
We see him reading a book about Jack Welch, the former head of GE, who was considered a financial and management guru in the 1990s.
Apparently, Gilberto missed 1990’s “Godfather 3,” where Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone tries to go legit and can’t and cries, “Just when I thought I was out ... they pull me back in!”
The brothers find the same problem with a number of players in the cartel who aren’t going for the idea of getting out of the drug business.
It takes a few episodes of the third season before you really get a handle on the characters and the story. It eventually draws you into the family dynamics while ramping up the action. Eventually, it introduces Jorge Salcedo (Matías Varela), the head of the cartel’s spying network. He proves an interesting character, having initially offered his services to help get rid of Escobar, whom he saw as a national threat, but now finds himself and his family trapped in the cocaine business.
Though well-done and watchable, season three of “Narcos” doesn’t really distinguish itself from a number of other drug-crime stories without Escobar. You can never underestimate the appeal of a madman.