‘The Infiltrator’ Trailer: Walter White Versus Pablo Escobar

Bryan Cranston became a superstar as drug kingpin Walter White on AMC’s Breaking Bad. Clearly one of the hooks of this summer’s The Infiltrator is the way it flips Cranston’s image on its ear; this time he play the federal agent who goes undercover to take down notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. Here’s the full synopsis from Broad Green Pictures:

Based on a true story, Federal agent Robert “Bob” Mazur (Bryan Cranston) goes deep undercover to infiltrate Pablo Escobar’s drug trafficking scene plaguing the nation in 1986 by posing as slick, money-laundering businessman Bob Musella. Teamed with impulsive and streetwise fellow agent Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo) and rookie agent posing as his fiancé Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), Mazur befriends Escobar’s top lieutenant Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt). Navigating a vicious criminal network in which the slightest slip-up could cost him his life, Mazur risks it all building a case that leads to indictments of 85 drug lords and the corrupt bankers who cleaned their dirty money, along with the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, one of the largest money-laundering banks in the world.

It’s a pretty solid trailer, and director Brad Furman’s adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer with Matthew McConaughey is one of the all-time underrated legal thrillers. I wonder, though, how many more movies and TV shows and documentaries they can make about Pablo Escobar. People are up in arms about one more Ghostbusters, but there are way more Pablo Escobar movies than Ghostbusters movies. Aren’t there other infamous drug kingpins whose stories could be turned into biographical fiction? He can’t be the only one. What about a movie about Walter White? That would be something new. The Infiltrator opens in theaters on July 13.