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Review: Cocaine Cowboys Two: Hustlin’ with the Godmother

By Casey Owen (DVDfeed) via DeVoteD DVD Australia
Friday 10 July, 2009

Cocaine Cowboys Two: Hustlin’with the Godmother begins with the story of Charles Cosby. Cosby had a relatively happy childhood in Oakland, California, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. That is until his parents’ marriage fell apart due to his mother finding out about her husband’s homosexual affair and subsequent drug use. From then on Charles was just part of another broken family in urban California. He had dreams of becoming a lawyer until he was exposed to the crack-cocaine explosion of the late ’70s and early ’80s. At a very young age he was swept up into the life of a small-time dealer and found he was quite good at it. Before too long his ambitions switched from being a defender of criminals to being a criminal himself.

After a short time petty dealing Charles Cosby began to understand the illicit business more completely and became determined to climb its ladder. From his first deal he got deeper and deeper into the crack-cocaine dealing enterprise and it wasn’t too long before he had people working under him and a few ‘crack-houses’ across Oakland, where dealers and customers could meet privately and where the coke could be cooked and divided. (The whole powder to ‘rocks’ conversion process is, strangely, illustrated in the film all in a nifty step-by-step-type format, no less, with helpful hints from Charles Cosby himself. Can’t really see Jamie Oliver taking to the recipe though.)

By the late ’80s and into the early ’90s Cosby thought he was living the good life. But the common denominator of all burgeoning illegal drug trades always loomed to make business difficult - street violence. Cosby’s profits began to wane but through his experience and street smarts he managed to avoid any violence being committed against him, all the while dishing it out himself in an effort to keep the cash flowing. It was about this time he saw a TV news story detailing the capture of Miami drug baron, ‘The Godmother’ Griselda Blanco. Charles Cosby was about to bite off far more than he could chew when he first sought to contact Blanco.

As far as the illicit Miami drug trade goes, Cocaine Cowboys Two begins where its 2006 predecessor Cocaine Cowboys left off. The original billed itself as being the true stories that inspired De Palma’s Scarface (1983) and the ’80s TV series Miami Vice, and contained various talking heads of the cops and crims involved in the early ’80s invasion of Colombian drug lords and aspiring drug lords into Miami. Riddled with grisly photos of bloodied bodies and pics of piles upon piles of cash that would make Tony Montana green with envy, the second instalment is full of much of the same, but with a twist: A love story. You read correctly. Perhaps the most intriguing part of CC2 is the passionate, volatile relationship between young Charles Cosby and the old, incarcerated Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco.

Through years of letters and phone conversations, the two formed quite a connection. Cosby’s awe of the all-powerful cocaine matriarch eventually developed into a deep, mutual love. Despite doubtless reservations about her, ahem, let’s say ‘tendency’, to violently dispose of her husbands and lovers (one of her nicknames being the Black Widow), Cosby eventually found himself part of the Godmother’s family, both her immediate and her wider, drug-related posse. CC2, also directed by CC1’s Billy Corben, contains all the news reports, interviews with the usual suspects and cops, interspersing the live-action with some surprisingly effective re-enactments done via some slick but simple black-and-white animation. Various violent hits, and particularly an artfully done pastiche of the early, violent life of Griselda Blanco back in Colombia (somewhat reminiscent of the far more expensive animation sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill), is so effective in fact it almost makes the Godmother a sympathetic character. But the details of her early life serve merely as an explanation for her later sordid deeds. Any sympathy one may have felt is promptly forgotten when her insatiable ruthlessness and staggering bodycount eventually comes to the fore. Even from behind bars, this is truly one woman not to be messed with, as Cosby finds out first-hand.

Cocaine Cowboys Two is a truly ripping yarn, perhaps more so than the first. One constantly has to remind oneself the character of the Godmother is chillingly real, and one might just wake up screaming if going to bed too early after viewing, with dreams of an angry Godmother out for blood. Charles Cosby is an intriguing character and engaging narrator and as the mess goes down towards the end, you experience some of the fear he felt, being pursued by a ruthless woman who, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, gets her own way. It is definitely one for fans of Scarface. Take Tony Montana, multiply his cash, victims, power and influence several times over, add a pinch more flamboyance, a dash more spitefulness, a chunk more intelligence, slap a wig on him and you’ve got yourself Griselda ‘The Godmother’ Blanco. Sometimes truth is a whole lot stranger than fiction.