Filmmakers can struggle to prevent their swaggering villain from upstaging their innocuous hero. Writer-director Andrea Di Stefano clearly didn’t worry about that when making Escobar: Paradise Lost. If he did, he wouldn’t have cast Benicio del Toro as the bad guy.
Playing Colombian cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, the charismatic del Toro is the most vivid presence in the movie, which was loosely inspired by actual events. The other two principals are amiable and attractive, but bland. Fortunately for the movie’s watchability, the fictional romance of Nick (Josh Hutcherson) and Maria (Claudia Traisac) exists primarily to bring the former into orbit of the eccentric, lethal Pablo.
Disheveled yet commanding, del Toro’s Escobar is a pudgy, overgrown kid with a menagerie of African animals. He relishes playing the indulgent patron, even if he more resembles a campesino. Like some American rappers who later invoked him, Pablo has an adolescent fixation with gangsters, including the doomed Bonnie and Clyde.
Nico — that’s what Pablo calls him — is well acquainted with the drug lord when the story begins. It’s 1991, and Escobar is about to surrender to the police, as previously negotiated. All that remains before he enters a luxury prison, designed to his specifications, is to call his mother and kneel so they can share a farewell prayer. Pablo is a devout Catholic.