Cocaine Bear

When "Cocaine Bear" ads started going viral, the immediate question was whether this was another one of those titles in search of a movie (see "Snakes on a ...

To the extent wandering around the woods being menaced by an unconvincing bear doesn’t cost much either, even a modicum of success will probably unleash a Cocaine Bear Cinematic Universe. Exploitation fare has its place, and nobody can accuse “Cocaine Bear” of taking itself too seriously. as a cop seeking the same; and Margo Martindale as a park ranger with amorous designs on a visiting biologist (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). As we’ve witnessed in other movies that employ movie magic to replicate present-day animals (as opposed to, say, monsters or dinosaurs), the bear might be unstoppable, but shoddy CGI renderings can halt a movie in its tracks. “Bear” doesn’t achieve that level of wit, but it does ratchet up the gore factor with limbs occasionally flying in all directions, those body parts looking a whole lot more realistic than the bear itself. The answer lies somewhere in between, as director Elizabeth Banks conjures bursts of absurdist energy and humor without delivering anything approaching a sustained rush.

If only this Pablo Escobear of a movie had snorted enough to stay up later and write a better plot.

Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. “Cocaine Bear” is like a dull butter knife against those two. “Jane,” the opening song, is an homage to ”Wet Hot American Summer,” which Banks co-starred in and had the same Jefferson Starship opening tune. There’s a reference to Pines Mall, which is a little nod to “Back to the Future,” but who really cares? Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden have created a mashup of Quentin Tarantino bloodfests, Sam Raimi’s scare tactics and the Coen brothers’ absurdity. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

Cocaine Bear takes its basic premise from a true story but extends it to exhilarating highs. Read our review of the viral sensation.

Banks and Warden are clearly in on all the jokes of Cocaine Bear; the film begins with a Wikipedia quote after all. Above all, Cocaine Bear is hilarious. A drug smuggler tosses bags of cocaine out of a plane before meeting his maker and the poor bear just happened to come across the coke, eagerly eating some. Let’s be honest; no one buys a ticket to Cocaine Bear expecting a character-driven drama. While the real bear died, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden were clearly inspired by the incident and created an elaborate set of characters around a bear high on cocaine. Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director is loosely based on the true story of an American black bear ingesting over 30 kilograms of cocaine, which was dropped off a plane.

A bear finds cocaine in the woods, gobbles it up and goes on a deadly rampage in this inert horror-comedy directed by the actress.

[Wayfair coupon $20 off](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/wayfair) [TurboTax service code 2023 - $20 off](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/turbotax) One of those “inspired by true events”—i.e., almost wholly fictitious—stories, “Cocaine Bear” takes place in 1985, when (as a news clip of that era featuring Tom Brokaw tells us) a cocaine trafficker fell to his death from a plane in Tennessee while ditching duffel bags full of the stuff.

Like “Snakes on a Plane” and “We Bought a Zoo,” Elizabeth Banks's film provides exactly what the title promises. Then what?

As he points out, Cáit “says as much as she needs to say.” The camera constantly takes its cue from her darting gaze; the fact that she notices so much, and talks so little, is, for Seán, a virtue that he understands and shares. (So chronic is Heidi’s yearning for the mountains that she sleepwalks.) The home to which Cáit is sent, in contrast, seems like a genuine haven: a farmhouse owned by Seán (Andrew Bennett) and his wife, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), who takes one look at the new arrival, with her unwashed limbs, and runs her a hot bath. For the bear, I guess, except that C.G.I., despite its wondrous re-creation of flesh and fur, is less adept at pixelating a personality, and there is little here to match the appeal of Baloo, in “The Jungle Book” (1967), who consumed nothing more potent than prickly pear and pawpaw. Near the farm is a well, so clear and so still, like a magical source in a legend, that you can drink from it. Finally, you could recover with “The Quiet Girl,” which, with Oscar night just around the bend, is the last of the contenders to be released. Such was the case with “Snakes on a Plane” (2006), and it’s my forlorn duty to report that “Cocaine Bear” follows suit. It’s as if she were puzzled by her place in the modern world—shades of the dreamy kids in “Close.” (Is this a winking reference to “Little April Shower,” the daintiest scene in “Bambi”?) It’s as if Quentin Tarantino kicked off his career, in the early nineteen-nineties, with a tale of some dogs who visit an actual reservoir. This elemental sequence comes from a 1977 film, scarily titled “Day of the Animals,” and the joy of it is that the battling man is played by Leslie Nielsen, and that the movie is not—repeat, not—intended as a comedy. Why does the whole cast, including the kids, swear so freely and so loudly (“We’re fucked,” Henry cries), if not to advertise the amazingness of the main plot? As with “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993) and “We Bought a Zoo” (2011), “Cocaine Bear” is explained by its title. To that end, his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), and a henchman, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.), are dispatched to the great green wilds of Georgia.

The 1985 account of a bear that ingested a stash of cocaine gets gleefully exaggerated horror-comedy treatment in this latest movie directed by Elizabeth ...

Elsewhere, she pays enjoyable unsubtle homage to this story’s specific moment, cramming the soundtrack with ’80s hits (but no “Ursine o’ the Times,” alas) and having Matthew Rhys, Russell’s “The Americans” co-star, play the ill-fated Thornton in a quick prologue. The suspense derives in part from the pulse-pounding exertions of Mark Mothersbaugh’s score, and also from the characters’ assumption that black bears are (a) less dangerous than brown bears and (b) always sober. Does a bear snort in the woods? Banks shows us some of those commercials at the outset, though she stops short of satirizing the “Hugs, Not Drugs” campaign that was a fixture of so many elementary schools, with none other than Hugs the Bear serving as its furry, friendly mascot. The action begins to drag, the twists get more belabored and what played at first like a gleefully unapologetic exploitation-movie exercise threatens to become a late-breaking morality play. Not all the bear’s victims solicit your contempt, which is another way of saying it isn’t easy to predict who lives and who dies, though you can bet the latter will include the idiot backing away toward a conveniently positioned grab-and-go window. What you probably haven’t seen is a 500-pound bear (because everything is bigger in Hollywood) mauling her way through a once-idyllic stretch of federally protected woodland. You’ve seen worse new movies in February, maybe even [this February](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-02-14/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-review-marvel-paul-rudd). Having grabbed headlines with its viral trailer, cheerfully self-explanatory title and sly redefinition of “high concept,” the movie has already invited obvious pre-release comparisons to Whether or not audiences form lines for “Cocaine Bear,” it’s hard to completely dismiss a mainstream horror-comedy that offers a nice supply of sharp and grisly, at least until it takes a disappointing turn for soft and cuddly. From this real-life tale of greed, stupidity and humanity’s unthinking abuse of nature rises a natural question: What if the bear, rather than simply kilo-ing over, had gone on a murderous coke-fueled rampage driven by a hunger for not just sinewy human flesh (though there’s plenty of that), but for another whiff of that sweet, sweet powder? The bags full of cocaine he was transporting into the country took longer to recover.

The new movie "Cocaine Bear" is a highly fictionalized account of a drug-smuggling drop gone wrong in September 1985. Here's the real story behind the film.

While Thornton’s loved ones guessed that he would have been proud of his infamous end — “He would have loved the concept of the warriors who fall from the sky,” his ex-wife told The Post in 1985 — others didn’t pay much mind to what Thornton might have thought in his final moments. “I hope he got a hell of a high out of that [cocaine].” Warden told The Post that the man ultimately responsible for “Cocaine Bear” is not featured after the first 10 minutes of the new movie. The ring was linked to a larger group called “The Company,” a syndicate running drugs and guns that authorities estimated in 1980 had more than 300 members and $26 million worth of boats and planes. Alonso, Georgia’s chief medical examiner, told reporters the bear was found “in a very badly decomposed state” at Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, surrounded by several plastic bags that authorities estimated had held about 75 pounds of cocaine. [2015 blog post](https://kyforky.com/blogs/journal/cocaine-bear) that the stuffed bear was once owned by country music star Waylon Jennings before it became a spectacle for shoppers. Three months later, after authorities discovered that a 175-pound bear had died of what the coroner described as a stomach “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” the animal was given a new name in popular culture: “ When Thornton was found with a broken neck after his parachute did not open, he had on him $4,500 in cash, two pistols, two knives, ropes, food and more than 70 pounds of cocaine, according to police. “Cocaine Bear,” a dark comedy that premieres Friday in theaters nationwide, is a highly fictionalized account, in which the titular 500-pound American black bear eats a duffel bag of cocaine and goes on a killing rampage in Georgia, forcing tourists to band together to survive an apex predator hopped up on coke. 11, 1985, Fred Myers got up to shave at his home in Knoxville when he looked out his window and saw a body tangled up in a parachute. Long before he turned to drug smuggling and made a bear very famous, Thornton lived the high life. But Thornton’s life took a turn after he dropped out of college for a second time in 1966.

It is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks' insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd.

But while the suspense that had carried the film for the first two-thirds of its brisk running time dips as it nears its conclusion, “Cocaine Bear” still emerges as a hell of a high. Much of the joy of “Cocaine Bear” comes from the look of the creature itself, which is surprisingly high-tech for a cheesy, silly movie. (Both kids are great in a throwback way, reminiscent of the kinds of brash, profane characters you’d see in movies like “ [The Bad News Bears](/reviews/the-bad-news-bears-1976)” or “ [The Goonies](/reviews/the-goonies-1985).” The boy’s reaction to discovering one of these illegal bundles is not fear, but rather a cheerful: “Let’s sell drugs together!”) They include a pair of mismatched buddy drug dealers ( [Alden Ehrenreich](/cast-and-crew/alden-ehrenreich) and O’Shea Jackson Jr.); their humorless boss ( [Ray Liotta](/cast-and-crew/ray-liotta) in his final film role, recalling one of his signature performances in “ [Goodfellas](/reviews/great-movie-goodfellas-1991)”); and a police detective from the Kentucky town where the smuggler’s plane eventually crashed (Isiah Whitlock Jr., perfectly deadpan as ever). The few times “Cocaine Bear” injects even a meager amount of sentimentality, the pacing starts to lag. [Jimmy Warden](/cast-and-crew/jimmy-warden) has taken the basic facts—a 175-pound Georgia black bear ingested some cocaine that a drug smuggler dropped from an airplane in 1985—and imagined what might have happened if the bear hadn’t died, but rather sampled the stuff and gotten hooked.

'Cocaine Bear' director Elizabeth Banks talks about the movie's star-studded cast, the right kind of gore, and defying expectations.

I also feel like with this movie, the audaciousness and boldness of not just the title, but the movie that lives up to the title, is something that creates conversation and people don’t want to miss out on that conversation. Am I going to be able to disappear into this? Am I going to get to work with interesting people? I want to continue to surprise not just the audience, but myself. Am I going to be challenged? You almost have to oversell it with the gore and the blood and the outrageousness of it because it makes it more operatic and more entertaining. That being said, I love laughing and I love funny movies and I would love to see more comedy in the theater. I thought there was a great opportunity here to make people laugh, but to also take them on a a bigger ride where the laughs are just part of it. It’s not a documentary, but I also wanted to acknowledge the reality of a bear attack. I want to go to the theater and have a communal experience. The audience is not expecting her to do as much as she does and to be as bold as she is. But she was down on the ground and she was on the wires.

The greatest joke of this blood-spattered horror-comedy from Elizabeth Banks is that it exists.

That “Cocaine Bear” is cautious about touching on this theme is understandable, maybe even preferable. And the script becomes dutifully sentimental at the end with characters forced to say things like “You’re more than a drug dealer. At one point, Cocaine Bear sniffs a hint of white powder and emerges with renewed strength. Early in the movie there’s a clip of the old “This is your brain on drugs” ad, a reminder that the story takes place against the backdrop of the drug war of the 1980s, a catastrophic policy failure with severe human ramifications that we are still living with. At its best, “Cocaine Bear” has the feel of an inside joke. Inspired by the slasher films of the 1980s, not to mention great horror-comedies from that era like the “Evil Dead” films, Banks grasps the comic potential of the gross-out. Banks doesn’t always dole out the viscera artfully (better to follow a leg with an arm, not another leg) but she commits to the too-muchness necessary for comedy. In fact, “Cocaine Bear” too often feels like a one-joke movie, stretched thin. After a pratfall in a plane leads a smuggler to drop a ton of drugs on the mountains of Georgia, a bear discovers it, snorts it up and turns into a mix of Tony Montana and Jason Voorhees. The plot twists can seem irrelevant, including a betrayal that has the impact of a soft sneeze. While it beats out “M3gan” in levels of gruesomeness, “Cocaine Bear” doesn’t have that film’s mean streak or moments of acid weirdness. Whereas “M3gan” steered clear of too much onscreen violence, angling for a PG-13 rating, “Cocaine Bear” wallows in it.

Movie Review: Directed by Elizabeth Banks, 'Cocaine Bear' is a loosely based-on-fact account of a bear that eats a mountain of cocaine and then goes on a ...

VHS is a thing of the past, and so is the late show and maybe even the whole concept of discovering things. They have to fail first and then get reclaimed by us through random discovery, preferably by popping in a dusty VHS cassette out of curiosity or turning on the late show. The mid-’80s was the height of Spielbergian kids’ adventures, but it was also the height of a particularly baggy and brutal period of slasher flicks, and Cocaine Bear carries whiffs of both. We’re here for the bear and the cocaine, and the film doesn’t skimp on that front either. appear to have set out to make a cult movie on purpose. Like the characters, it wanders around a bit too aimlessly, but by the end you feel like you’ve actually been somewhere. Sometimes the bear sneaks up on our characters like a grim woodland menace. By doing in one of the bigger names in the cast with their opening scene, Banks and writer Jimmy Warden slyly place us in a state of uncertainty over who will make it intact and who will not. Or the two low-level hoodlums, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), sent off by their boss (Ray Liotta) to retrieve the missing cocaine from Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia? Then he buckles in his parachute, puts on his sunglasses, kisses off the empty cockpit, and promptly hits his head and drops lifelessly into the clouds. It also takes a few cues from its time period, not just in the vintage anti-drug PSAs that open the picture but in pace and style. Elizabeth Banks’s action-comedy-thriller is loosely based on a 1985 incident when an American black bear ingested a massive amount of cocaine and was found dead soon thereafter.

The movie seems destined for internet infamy but doesn't live up to the promise of its viral trailer.

The stage is set, then, for a cast of wacky characters to descend on Blood Mountain to retrieve the gear. Following the incident, the bear was stuffed and displayed in the wonderfully named Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington. In the heat of the maulings, the film shifts from comic to disturbing: Intestines are exposed; heads roll. The story goes that a police officer-turned-drug smuggler hurled several duffle bags of cocaine from a plane and then met his own demise while trying to parachute from the craft himself. The film just doesn’t land right, and you can’t help but feel that it was manufactured just to be chopped up for a viral YouTube trailer. And [who wouldn’t want to see](https://twitter.com/SamuelAAdams/status/1628378464431620096?s=20) a bear on a drug-fueled rampage?