Cocaine Wars (1985)

User Rating:

3.4/10   

Director:

Héctor Olivera

Writers:

Steven M. Krauzer (writer)
Héctor Olivera (writer)

Release Date:

November 1985 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama

Tagline:

A Lone American Hero Challenges The Might Of A Viscous Drug Empire.

Plot:

Miami DEA agent Cliff Adams is in South America working undercover for Gonzalo Reyes, the biggest cocaine exporter in South America...

Plot Keywords:

Cocaine | TV Star | Bondage | Drug | Rack Torture

Cast

John Schneider	...	DEA Agent Cliff Adams
Kathryn Witt	...	Janet Meade
Royal Dano	...	Bailey
Federico Luppi	...	Gonzalo Reyes
Rodolfo Ranni	...	Gen. Lujan
Ivan Grey	...	Klausmann
Richard Hamlin	...	Wilhelm
Edgar Moore	...	Rikki
Armand Capo	...	Oswaldo
Martin Korey	...	Gomez
Tom Cundom	...	Bailey's driver
Ken Edgar	...	Kenny
Joe Capanga	...	Miguel
Marcos Woinsky	...	Pugg
Jacques Arndt	...	Franco

Also Known As:

La muerte blanca (Argentina)
Vice Wars

Runtime:

82 min | Argentina:110 min

Country:

Argentina | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Iceland:16 | UK:18 (cut) | Australia:R | USA:R | West Germany:18 | Argentina:16

Filming Locations:

Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina

Company:

Aries Cinematográfica Argentina

Quotes:

Gen. Lujan: [while applying the cattle prod to Cliff's theeth] "Tell me, Cliff... where are the papers?... You have no choice because I'm going to kill you...

Routine but passable drug-war "actioner" set in S. America.

The title and accompanying art work don't hold out much promise but this is a competent piece of film-making with several touches which lift it ever so slightly above the mediocre. However, the material is too routine and predictable to have much impact and its lack of distinction may have helped put an end to John Schneider's movie career. This is unfortunate since Schneider had both youth and size at this point and could possibly have competed with Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, and Chuck Norris for leads in action movies. (Assuming he got a better haircut.)

Schneider plays a man at odds with a South American drug lord and in one scene Schneider is captured and tortured for information by the drug lord's henchmen. He's stripped of his shirt, thus allowing him to show off an impressive but not over-muscled physique, and bound spreadeagled-style atop a table. Here, as is common throughout the movie, there's a small but imaginative touch that elevates the otherwise unexceptional proceedings.

As expected, Schneider is forced to endure electroshocks since electricity is almost always the torture of choice in these movies. And, as expected, his pants are left on, thus putting off-limits, in a gentlemanly sort of way, the very parts of his body most vulnerable to electric shocks! This means the sadistic henchman with the cattle-prod restricts himself just to shocks above his victim's waist. (Yes, there's the usual close-up of the tip of the prod being held to one of Schneider's nipples.)

But the sequence ends with a distinctive flair. Black-gloved hands pry apart Schneider's lips and we see the prod being roughly inserted into his mouth. Now, sticking something into the mouth of a man you're trying to make "talk" may not be very logical, but it gives the scene a sexual connotation that is often missing in these sequences, and it imparts to even a jaded audience the sort of chill that makes them pause and think: "Now, that must REALLY hurt."

Kathryn Witt, the indispensable "girlfriend," makes the most of trite material.