PARADISE LOST (2014)

Genre: Romance/Thriller
Director: Andrea Di Stefano
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Josh Hutcherson, Claudia Traisac, Brady Corbet, Carlos Bardem, Ana Girardot, Laura Londoño
Runtime: 2 hrs
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 2 July 2015

Synopsis: Nick thinks he has found paradise when he goes to join his brother in Colombia. A turquoise lagoon, an ivory beach, perfect waves? It’s a dream for this young Canadian surfer. Then he meets Maria, a stunning Colombian girl. They fall madly in love, and everything is going great. That is, until Maria introduces Nick to her uncle: Pablo Escobar.

Movie Review:

If you’re looking for a straightforward biopic on the fabled drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, then you’d be advised to look elsewhere. Instead, Italian actor-turned-screenwriter/director Andrea Di Stefano has taken the story of Colombia’s most notorious criminal and fashioned a romantic thriller built around two fictional characters – Nick (Josh Hutcherson), a Canadian surfer dude who has moved to the beaches near Medellin to help out in his brother’s shoestring surf business; and Maria (Spanish newcomer Claudia Traisac), a beautiful native whom he falls in love with, and whose uncle just happens to be the man Pablo himself.  

It isn’t just any actor who can slip into Pablo’s shoes, but thankfully for Di Stefano, Benecio del Toro is nothing less than compelling in the titular role. Our first sight of del Toro as El Patron is in 1991 on the eve of his negotiated surrendering to the police, his portly and physically imposing presence shrouded in shadow as he rises from his bed.  Not many actors can muster gravitas with understatement, but del Toro pulls it off beautifully, portraying both sides of the man with charm and charisma – one as the dedicated family man and well-loved folk hero, and two as the ruthless dictator who did not bat an eyelid to eliminate his enemies and everyone else who stood in his way or could compromise him in any other way.

As Di Stefano’s narrative goes, it is the former side of Pablo that Nick is first acquainted with. The first time he meets Pablo face to face is at the latter’s sprawling Hacienda mansion on the occasion of his birthday, where surrounded by family and close business associates, Pablo serenades his wife under a cloudless evening sky. No wonder then that Nick receives such a rude shock when he hears over the news how the local Colombian authorities and the United States are planning to apprehend Pablo for his role in a vast cocaine empire that was responsible for the death and ruin of hundreds of thousands, and how he and Maria are suddenly forced to go underground lest they be hauled up for questioning to determine their complicity.

The prologue we see at the beginning is in fact from this halfway mark, when Nick and Maria are jolted from their haste to flee the country by a knock on the door. Blindfolded and taken to some undetermined place in the woods, Nick is entrusted to drive to Ituango, meet up with a local who will show him the way to a cave where he is supposed to hide boxes of Pablo’s riches in diamonds, and then kill that same guide immediately after. If the first half of the movie was about building the mirage in the Milton-alluding subtitle, then this second half is precisely about the dissolution of that paradise as Nick confronts the monster that Pablo really is.

Ironically, it is also during this time that we see less of Pablo and more of Nick himself, who engages in a cat-and-mouse game with Pablo’s henchmen out to ensure that he doesn’t live to breathe another word. As much as we’d love to see more of del Toro, Hutcherson does carry the weight of the latter half capably on his own shoulders. The Hunger Games star, who also serves as executive producer of the film alongside del Toro, cuts a convincingly naïve persona at the start, whose innocence and desperation belies an inner tenacity, canny instincts and an unyielding will to live. It is Hutcherson’s character with whom we are meant to empathise with, and Hutcherson makes Nick both sympathetic and believable.

On his part, Di Stefano keeps the proceedings brisk and engaging, which makes for an appropriately tense thriller, if not necessarily a fine film. Yes, no matter that it isn’t and doesn’t aspire to be a character study about ‘The King of Cocaine’, there is no denying that one expects a movie with his name to place more emphasis on the man himself, especially given del Toro’s commanding performance. Instead, the point of view we are given is almost singularly that of Nick’s, and while it isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, it certainly feels as if it could have been much more intriguing if there were more of Pablo Escobar. But as a tragic love story that Di Stefano had intended it to be, it is suitably engrossing, all the way from an idyllic start to its unsentimental heart-breaking finish.

Movie Rating:

(No matter that the El Patron is often just sideshow, this sturdy romantic thriller is still gripping stuff thanks to a great performance by del Toro and a capable one by Hutcherson)

Review by Gabriel Chong