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A title like Cocaine Bear speaks for itself. It sums up the premise, but perhaps more importantly, it suggests an outrageous tone with energy to match. While drawing from the 1985 true crime account that left cocaine scattered across the wilderness and both a bear and the drug smuggler responsible dead, Cocaine Bear finds highly entertaining ways to fill in those story gaps with glorious violence, humor, and an incisive depiction of humanity at its best and worst.
Director Elizabeth Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden use the historic news event as a launching point for this raucous tale. After an opening preamble introducing the 500-pound apex predator to large amounts of cocaine and a drug-induced lethal rage, Cocaine Bear assembles its robust ensemble cast. The massive shipment of lost cocaine leaves kingpin Syd (Ray Liotta) desperate to retrieve the merch, so he sends his right-hand man Daveed (O’Shea Jackson) and son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) down to Georgia to retrieve it.
Because the pair aren’t the brightest, they unwittingly tip off authorities, prompting Detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) to beat them to the stash. At the opposite end, single mama bear Sari (Keri Russell) discovers that her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince, The Turning) and Dee Dee’s best friend Henry (Christian Convery, “Sweet Tooth”) skipped school for the day to see the waterfalls and heads to the park to retrieve her cubs. Toss in park rangers, delinquent teens, tourists, and more, and the rampaging bear has plenty to shred in the search for the next bump.
Assembling and then converging all players in the bear’s territory means it takes a bit before the main event kicks into high gear. As motives and personalities get established, director Elizabeth Banks effectively highlights the catastrophic ripple effects caused by the inciting event and the absurdities of being human. Cocaine Bear may play up its concept to a raucously funny degree, but it smartly rewrites history just enough to treat the bear much kinder than history did while doling out proper, harsh punishment for the humans. The way that Banks gives her apex predator personality and parallels Sari’s story lends warmth and rooting interest. While a title like Cocaine Bear likely means allegiances already align with the bear going in, the unexpected affection for the bear makes for a welcome surprise.
Because it’s so character-forward, with most of the humor stemming from human antics, the body count isn’t quite as high as you’d expect, and the pacing is prone to lulls. Luckily, when humans and bear collide, it often leads to glorious violence and carnage. An extended centerpiece sequence presents an early contender for best cinematic kill of the year, inducing wincing and laughter in equal measure. It’s such a showstopper that even subsequent gruesome deaths can’t quite achieve that same exhilaration. It doesn’t help that a supporting player gets a bizarre cutaway flashback demise, edited in such a way that suggests an excised kill left on the cutting room floor.
Even still, Cocaine Bear delivers on what it promises. Banks and Warden’s intentionally on-the-nose (pun intended) humor and playful puns maximize the concept of a large predator coked out beyond belief. As does the bear’s ability to rip its prey apart with ease. Banks leans into the absurdity of the concept and brings the horror-comedy fun. The odd couple partnership between Jackson and Ehrenreich and a scene-stealing Convery stand out among an all-star cast already firing on all cylinders.
The downside is that, much like the central animal, Cocaine Bear struggles to sustain the euphoric highs of its humor and horror, and not all choices work. But the irreverent, zany fun, the underlying tenderness toward the characters, and a deeply committed cast ensure crowd-pleasing, unhinged entertainment will be had.
Cocaine Bear crashes into theaters on February 24, 2023.
