Review: The Infiltrator

Olympia Dukakis is in but a few scenes in The Infiltrator, but her appearance electrifies this well-made but often disengaging drama. The film's characters notice as well - her brash and charismatic Aunt Vicky is described as "a wild horse" and "a breath of fresh air" - and the actors deliver their observations with a tinge of melancholy, as if mourning her dearth of screen time.

Dukakis's Aunt Vicky is one of the many satellites that orbit Robert Mazur, the infiltrator of the title, who was a real-life federal agent who went undercover to take down Pablo Escobar's drug-trafficking operation in 1986. Mazur is portrayed by Bryan Cranston, no stranger to essaying middle-aged men leading double lives, and he delivers a typically nuanced performance, utterly believable as the decent but necessarily deceitful family man and the undercover agent masquerading as a high-flying, glad-handing accountant navigating his way through a world of duplicitous bankers and drug dealers. The Infiltrator is an undeniable showcase for Cranston but, like last year's Oscar-nominated turn in Trumbo, it places him front and center at the expense of integrating him into the narrative and with the supporting cast.

Perhaps The Infiltrator might work better as a television drama - there are too many characters, too many potentially intriguing narrative strands and, all too often, the film feels suffocated. The chalk and cheese partnership of Mazur and streetwise Emir Abreau, for example, is never fully mined and, quite frankly, John Leguizamo as Abreau is so dynamic that one wonders if The Infiltrator might have been a more engaging brew had it been from his perspective. The attention paid to the first half of the film, wherein director Brad Furman observes Mazur's acclimation and assimilation with an almost clinically procedural eye, is remarkable but it is all but missing in the second half of the film.

Befuddling, since that second half contains the most intriguing relationships. First is the pairing of Mazur with novice undercover agent Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), whose intel-gathering skills may be an asset to Mazur but whose cover as his glamorous fiancee is an understandable worry to Mazur's real-life wife (Juliet Aubrey). Mazur and Ertz become friends with Robert Alcaino and his wife Gloria (Benjamin Bratt and Elena Anaya), and the scenes with the quartet underscore the dangers of getting too close while still maintaining focus on getting the job done. This applies not only to the chumminess between the men and the women, but to Mazur and Ertz who must forge a necessary intimacy in order for their cover to work.

And yet...something doesn't quite click into place. All the performers - Bratt has never been more commanding nor Kruger more coolly seductive - are bang on point, but the weight of the impending betrayal doesn't impact as it should. That's the overall issue of The Infiltrator - it's a solidly directed, well-produced, and excellently acted work, but it simply does not grip.

The Infiltrator

Directed by: Brad Furman

Written by: Ellen Brown Furman; based on the memoir by Robert Mazur

Starring: Bryan Cranston, Diane Kruger, Benjamin Bratt, John Leguizamo, Yul Vazquez, Juliet Aubrey, Amy Ryan, Olympia Dukakis, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jason Isaacs, Elena Anaya, Rubén Ochandiano, Michael Paré