Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

GazerRise Fantastic!

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

mpbtu746 I don't dislike the story, but I didn't like either, however there are some details about the movie as it is, that are completely wrong, starting with the actors, non of them are Colombian, they are from Spain, Puerto Rico... If you want to talk about Colombia, why not using Colombian actors, I'm pretty sure there are many willing to do it. Besides that, the fact that the movie was filmed in panama and not in Colombia, is also something to criticize, and some facts about the culture, the accents, details on the characters and their background are completely wrong. Therefore the movie is poorly done, and i don't recommend it, unless you don't care about this details and just about the love story behind.

SnoopyStyle In 1991, Pablo Escobar (Benicio Del Toro) is preparing to surrender and go to jail. He gathers his supporters including Nick Brady (Josh Hutcherson). He has a special assassination mission for Nick. A few years earlier, Canadian brothers Nick and Dylan Brady are building a surfing camp on the coast. Nick falls for local Maria. After being extorted by local thugs, Nick gets help from Maria's uncle political leader Pablo Escobar.Benicio Del Toro plays Escobar as a charming family man with a monster underneath. He shows that he would be great to play Escobar in a biopic, just not a biopic about a short Canadian surfer. Josh Hutcherson still looks like a kid. His character is hopelessly naive and white toast. His relationship with Maria has limited heat. I can't even tell how long they've been together. His child-like smile doesn't help. He's a kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It's a sideway method of taking on the iconic drug lord's story. The last act does have some thrills but they are always undercut by Hutcherson's shock and Canadian nice-boy sensibilities.

xin The movie is definitely not as bad as the critics have said. For example, I don't see any POV problem. It might not satisfy some audience by telling the story from the perspective of a Canadian surfer boy. But it fits reasonably well with the theme of the movie and the true story it wants to tell. Besides, it makes it possible to tell the story of Pablo Escobar with a much lower budget than a real full scale bio piece on him would allow.It is obvious that the director truly loves his actors and actresses giving the amount of screen time he allows the main characters to play out their emotions. But unfortunately the emotional display was neither necessary to carry the main plot, nor does it contribute much the thriller aspect of the movie. It distracts the audience more from the main plot, and make the already weak plot even weaker.Talking about the plot, it is the weakest aspect of the movie. Half of the story is spent on events that are before the movie's inciting incident. The writer might think it is absolutely necessary for setting up the story and the characters. The truth is that it only shows the lack of skills of the writer at handling its plot.The movie is not really a linear piece as many of the reviews have claimed. There is only one real flash-back at the end of the movie which is put there in place of the real ending to create a more subtle and more literary ending. Most of the confusion is caused by the movie's choice of putting the real inciting incident at the beginning of a story, as an attempt to keep the audience's attention before delving into a backstory that covers half of the movie, an exact signal that the backstory does not belong there, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with the structure of the story. This choice of plot line might not be a bad one for a romantic movie or an art-house piece, but definitely should not be there for thriller. It makes the movie feel like a badly stitched together piece of two very different movies from completely different genres. I understand the creators of the movie want to create a contrast to convey a stronger message. But this is not a novel, or a play which is split explicitly into three acts, and the audience get to take a thirty minutes break. Keep one of the two as the main plot, and the other as a subtext, either one will be much better than what it is now.I would not recommend that the writer to go back to school to really learn how to tell a story, that would be too mean. But at least send the script to a real expert who would very likely have pointed out the flaw in the plot at very beginning, and subsequent rewrites might have guaranteed a much more successful movie.I am not sure how to comment on the acting. The movie is doomed by its plot from the beginning, there is not much the actors could have done to save it. The director made a reasonable choice, to give his stars enough freedom to create the characters. Unfortunately, when it is overdone it becomes too much a distraction and makes the plot even weaker.The only acting in the movie that really deserves accolades is from the actor who played Drango. Del Toro obviously had a lot of fun playing the character Escobar, but the end result is not proportionate to the amount of creative freedom he was given. Hutcherson did a reasonable good job at portraying the emotions of the pov character that fits the "innocence lost" theme of the movie reasonable well. But he needss a better command of how to use his body to convey his emotions. Acting is not carried out only by the muscles above the neck.

mabulmarulanda In the film Escobar: Paradise Lost, the editing generates excitement and anxiety, creating an interesting and spacial style that reflects a cinematic signature for Andrea Di Stefano's impressive debut as a director. In addition, the hand held camera movement in every scene makes us feel emotions and sensations from Nick's (Josh Hutcherson) point of view throughout the narrative. Furthermore, the very well detailed mis-en-scence reveals thorough study and research of locations, props, and costumes; intensity of colors and light in each frame are magnificent. Moreover, the efficient use of foreground, middle-ground, and background from beginning to end demonstrates a well-designed piece of art. In the plot, we find murder, corrupt governmental, news, and prison systems, a love story, and a web of lies crafted by power-hungry Pablo Escobar (Benicio Del Toro). It was important for the form not to get in the way of the content in order tell the story in a realistic way, involve the audience, and help them understand the social structure of Colombia at that time. Nick is the most important character in this love story, and he is an innocent victim, used as a marionette by Escobar, the world's most dangerous person.