| Medellin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Franck Gastambide |
| Written by |
|
| Produced by |
|
| Starring |
|
| Distributed by | Amazon Prime Video |
Release date |
|
Running time | 104 minutes |
| Countries |
|
| Language | French |
Medellin is a 2023 action-comedy movie directed by Franck Gastambide, written by Gastambide and Charles Van Tieghem, and starring Gastambide, Ramzy Bedia, Anouar Toubali, and Mike Tyson.
Reda is a French wannabe tough guy who manages a boxing gym. When his brother Brahim, a social media influencer, fan of narcoculture, and even more so of Pablo Escobar, who calls himself Pablito, is kidnapped by cartel members during a trip to Colombia, Reda unexpectedly jumps into action, gathering his gym members and making them pledge to accompany him to Medellin to rescue his younger brother.
However, at the airport, only his childhood buddy Stan and Chafix, a dwarf who trains at the gym, show up. The three unlikely heroes land in Medellin and head to a strip club, where they meet and question Cynthia, a pole dancer. She speaks a little French and suspiciously tries to get them to go somewhere else. They end up snorting cocaine before going on a full-night drug-fueled party with strippers. When they wake up with horrible headaches, they realize that they somehow ended up kidnapping Don Nacho, the son of El Diablo, the cartel leader.
Reda posts a video online, where he asks for his brother in exchange for Don Nacho. Soon after, his phone rings: it is his brother. Brahim sounds panicked as he explains he had actually staged his kidnapping in an ill-conceived stunt to drive up viewership and that he is really enjoying a vacation in another city in Colombia. Realizing that they are holding Don Nacho for no reason, the trio decide to pick up Brahim and flee. Alas, the cartel is already on their tracks and while Reda, Stan, and Chafix (with Don Nacho in the trunk of the car) barely escape after a car chase and shoot-out, Brahim is kidnapped (for real this time) by the cartel.
Now, a real hostage exchange needs to take place. During a video call, El Diablo shows Brahim being mauled by one of his attack dogs, while Reda and his friends are on a boat and have dropped Don Nacho in the sea as shark bait. El Diablo agrees to the exchange, but as Don Nacho tries to swim back to the boat, his legs are snapped off by a shark. Unless quickly taken care off, he will die. The three companions bring Don Nacho to a local vet, who treats his wounds, but Don Nacho has lost too much blood. Both Reda and Stan find excuses not to help with a transfusion but Chafix, a universal donor, generously offers his blood, at the risk of his own life. The transfusion complete, they set off to a Medellin cemetery to complete the trade.
To fool the cartel, the trio hide Don Nacho's shortened limbs under a blanket and try to escape with Brahim before El Diablo realizes the subterfuge. But Don Nacho manages to open the door of the car, revealing his infirmity, making El Diablo furious. The cartel boss orders his men to shoot Reda and his friends.
Leaving Brahim to his fate, the three barely escape the goons after a long run through the slums of Medellin, with the help of Cynthia. She reveals herself to be an undercover police officer named Marissa who is trying to take down the cartel. However, as she tries to get police cover for the trio's escape, she finds out that the entire force is corrupt. Driving towards the Venezuelan border, they receive a new video showing El Diablo torturing Brahim. Reda decides that unless they go back and rescue his brother and somehow stop the cartel, they will always live in fear.
Marissa takes them to Robbie, an American military operative who quickly trains Reda and Stan in the use of firearms while devising a way for Chafix to help find Brahim's location. With a concealed GPS tracker, Chafix provokes the cartel in a bar, is knocked out by a chair, and taken to the same location as Brahim and locked in a cage.
Thanks to the tracker, Robbie dispatches Reda and Stan to a cocaine manufacturing facility, where the pair finds Brahim and manages to escape, only to realize they forgot Chafix. After some hesitation, they go back and, thanks to Robbie's training, make quick work of a large number of goons.
They meet Marissa in a hacienda outside the city, which Brahim recognizes as a property of Pablo Escobar. While moving around inside the house, Brahim finds a secret passage leading to a helicopter. As they plan their way out, Marissa asks Reda to help her get rid of the cartel. They devise a plan to rig the house with explosives and bait the cartel into the trap. El Diablo and his goons soon arrive, guns blazing. While Stan learns to fly the helicopter using online videos, Reda, holed up in one of the bedrooms, realizes that the steel-reinforced walls will block the remote signal for the bomb and instead decides to sacrifice himself, taking the whole cartel with him. In the end, he is celebrated in France as a hero.
Romey Norton of Ready Steady Cut described Medellin as an overall adequate action film, packed with dark humor and exciting action sequences with decent acting from a well-known cast. [1]
Archika Khurana of The Times of India found the movie entertaining and funny for the most part but noted that the script was inconsistent and failed to take a deep dive into the narrative. [2]
John Serba of Decider gave the movie a SKIP IT rating, citing a lack of rhythm between the script and the well-executed but unremarkable action. [3]
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician, who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "the king of cocaine", Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death—equivalent to $70 billion as of 2022—while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Cali Cartel was a drug cartel based in southern Colombia, around the city of Cali and the Valle del Cauca. Its founders were the brothers Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela and José Santacruz Londoño. They broke away from Pablo Escobar and his Medellín associates in 1988, when Hélmer "Pacho" Herrera joined what became a four-man executive board that ran the cartel.
The Medellín Cartel was a powerful and highly organized Colombian drug cartel and terrorist organization originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia, that was founded and led by Pablo Escobar. It is often considered to be the first major "drug cartel" and was referred to as such; due to the organization's upper echelons and overall power-structure being built on a partnership between multiple Colombian traffickers operating alongside Escobar. Included were Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, Fabio Ochoa Vásquez, Juan David Ochoa Vásquez, José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha and Carlos Lehder. Escobar's main partner in the organization however was his cousin Gustavo Gaviria who handled much of the cartel's shipping arrangements and the more general and detailed logistical aspects of the cocaine trafficking routes and international smuggling networks which were supplying at least 80% of the world's cocaine during its peak. Gustavo, also known as León seems to have also had a strong hand in the cartel's unprecedented acts of narcoterrorism, right alongside his cousin Pablo and was considered to be second in command of the cartel and therefore one of Colombia's most wanted men, with both him and Escobar having arrest warrants pending from other nations where their criminal activity had spread to, such as in Spain and the U.S. Meanwhile, Pablo Escobar's brother Roberto Escobar acted as the organization's accountant. The cartel operated from 1976 to 1993 in Colombia (Antioquia), Bolivia, Panama, Central America, Peru, the Bahamas, the United States, as well as in Canada.
Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas is a Colombian and German former drug lord who was co-founder of the Medellín Cartel. Born to a German father and Colombian mother, he was the first high-level drug trafficker extradited to the United States, after which he was released from prison in the United States after 33 years in 2020. Originally from Armenia, Colombia, Lehder eventually ran a cocaine transport empire on Norman's Cay island, 210 miles (340 km) off the Florida coast in the central Bahamas.
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate. He was considered to be one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, also known as Don Berna or Adolfo Paz, is a former leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary group, as well as the leader of The Office of Envigado cartel.
José Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, also known by the nicknames Don Sombrero and El Mexicano, was a Colombian drug lord who was one of the leaders of the Medellín Cartel along with the Ochoa brothers and Pablo Escobar. At the height of his criminal career, Rodríguez was acknowledged as one of the world's most successful drug dealers. In 1988, Forbes magazine included him in their annual list of the world's billionaires.
The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
Hell is a 2010 Mexican neo-western black comedy crime drama film produced by Bandidos Films and directed by Luis Estrada, following the line of La ley de Herodes. A political satire about drug trafficking, organized crime and the Mexican Drug War, the film received an NC-17 rating by the MPAA for "some graphic violence and explicit sexual content".
Disney's Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama is a 2005 Disney Channel Original Movie produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. It is the second TV film based on the animated television series Kim Possible. This film includes a mix of hand-drawn animation and computer animation.
Gustavo Fring is a fictional character portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito in the Breaking Bad franchise, serving as one of the main antagonists in the crime drama series Breaking Bad and a major character in its prequel Better Call Saul. He is a Chilean-American businessman and major narcotics distributor in the Southwestern United States who uses several legitimate businesses, including a chain of successful fast food restaurants called Los Pollos Hermanos and an industrial laundry facility called Lavandería Brillante, as fronts used to launder money for a vast drug operation.
Ignacio Gómez is a Colombian journalist known for his high-risk reporting on organized crime, corruption, and paramilitary groups. In 2000, he received the "Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat" Amnesty Media Award. In 2002, he was awarded the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Drug barons of Colombia refer to some of the most notable drug lords which operate in illegal drug trafficking in Colombia. Several of them, notably Pablo Escobar, were long considered among the world's most dangerous and most wanted men by U.S. intelligence. "Ruthless and immensely powerful", several political leaders, such as President Virgilio Barco Vargas, became convinced that the drug lords were becoming so powerful that they could oust the formal government and run the country.
Narcos is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Chris Brancato, Carlo Bernard, and Doug Miro. Set and filmed in Colombia, seasons 1 and 2 are based on the story of Colombian narcoterrorist and drug lord Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellín Cartel and billionaire through the production and distribution of cocaine. The series also focuses on Escobar's interactions with drug lords, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, and various opposition entities. Season 3 picks up after the fall of Escobar and continues to follow the DEA as they try to shut down the rise of the infamous Cali Cartel.
American Made is a 2017 American action comedy film directed by Doug Liman, written by Gary Spinelli, and starring Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejía, Caleb Landry Jones, and Jesse Plemons. It is inspired by the life of Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot who became a drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel in the 1980s and then, in order to avoid jail time, became an informant for the DEA.
Ignacio "Nacho" Varga is a fictional character who appears in the AMC television series Better Call Saul, a prequel spin-off of Breaking Bad. He is portrayed by Michael Mando and was created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.
Taxi 5 is a 2018 French action comedy film directed by Franck Gastambide. A sequel to Taxi 4, it is the fifth installment of the Taxi film series and features different characters.
Michael Ehrmantraut is a fictional character in the television series Breaking Bad and its spinoff prequel Better Call Saul, portrayed by Jonathan Banks. Mike is a former Philadelphia police officer and United States Marine Corps veteran who works for Gus Fring—and, on occasion, Saul Goodman—as a private investigator, head of security, cleaner, and hitman. While an officer in Philadelphia, he engaged in corrupt activities that indirectly led to the death of his son Matt, leading Mike to move to Albuquerque to watch over and financially support his daughter-in-law Stacey and granddaughter Kaylee through jobs in the criminal underworld.
Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca is a fictional character in the AMC television series Better Call Saul, which is a companion show to Breaking Bad. Lalo, who was created by Peter Gould and screenwriter Gordon Smith, and is portrayed by Tony Dalton, is introduced in the show's fourth season. Lalo is mentioned in dialogue in the Breaking Bad episode "Better Call Saul" that introduces Saul Goodman, though Lalo does not appear in the series.
