Benicio del Toro is a better Pablo Escobar than Javier Bardem, the same way Escobar: Paradise Lost is a better film about the drug lord than Loving Pablo – but the latter only marginally. Unlike Bardem, del Toro speaks Spanish throughout, except when addressing Nick Brady (Josh Hutcherson), which makes sense because Nick is Canadian. Moreover, most of the actors in Paradise Lost are Latino or Spanish, and their characters accordingly speak the language of Cervantes.
The problem here is that the movie plays like a remake of the Last King of Scotland – and is just about as faithful to reality. Nick has gone surfing in Colombia, where he meets María (Claudia Traissac), and it's love at first sight. Little does Nick know that María is Escobar’s ‘almost-like-a-daughter-to-me’ niece. Yada yada yada the young, wide-eyed foreigner is seduced by the superficially affable and charismatic sociopath, only to discover sooner rather than later that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Now, del Toro can conjure affability, charisma, and sociopathy at the drop of hat, and he doesn't need to be in every scene to steal the movie; conversely, he couldn't save the film even if he did appear in every scene, because the story isn't about him, so Escobar doesn't so much inhabit the movie as he hovers over it, like a bird of prey.
As for Nick and María, they are as make-believe as James McAvoy’s character in the Last King of Scotland. We don’t care what happens to them anymore than writer/director Andrea Di Stefano cares about what happens to Escobar, who literally and figuratively gets away with murder.
