"COCAINE BEAR" (2023) Directed by Elizabeth Banks #cocainebear

"After seeing the trailer for this “based on true events” tale from 1985 on every trip to my local cinema during the past few months I didn’t hold out much hope of enjoying this bizarre romp into a surreal past, but I’m allowed to be wrong on occasion. From the 1980’s inspired musical soundtrack and a beginning dripping with TV news segments, stock footage of the day and the laughable adverts of the day featuring either Nancy Reagan and her “Just Say No” campaign or the “This is your brain on drugs” comparison to an egg (yes, an egg!) that so inspired the mighty Bill Hicks in his comedy routines of the early 1990’s, I was in from the beginning to the very end, and an end credits brilliantly accompanied by a remix of “White Lines” (Don’t Do it) by Melle Mel.

Are you the hunted or the hunter?

That particular rhetorical question is especially apt as Cocaine Bear has both, and on either side of the white dividing line, as the hunters and the hunted go in search of 70Ibs of football sized packages of cocaine dropped from an aeroplane over Knoxville, Georgia, and scattered all across the appropriately named “Blood Mountain”. Almost immediately you have two tourists, two children, two hapless drug smuggling hoodlums and one very amorous Park Ranger caught up, whether they wish to be or not, in the finding and hunting of the illegal treasure and, naturally, a giant black bear with a taste for cocaine as well as human blood".

The above is an extract from my spoiler free review of "Cocaine Bear" that I originally penned and published to my Medium blog site on 26th March 2023 and the review can be read in full here:

https://medium.com/@stephenblackford561/cocaine-bear-2023-cd1f837fe669

This film also forms part of my 7 volumes of "essential film reviews collection" that are currently only available in E-Book or Kindle form but, should you have a Kindle "Unlimited" package, you can read any and every one of the 7 volumes for free:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4HZSTTH?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&storeType=ebooks

Four self-published books this year, two planned for 2024 so far and the seven volumes of film reviews above, if you are able, here are three further ways and means of supporting me:

https://www.patreon.com/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.paypal.me/TheBlackfordBookClub
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/steveblackford

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