Bryan Cranston — a Best Actor Oscar nominee for “Trumbo” — continues his rewarding post-“Breaking Bad’’ big-screen career with another juicy real-life role in the highly entertaining “The Infiltrator.”
Moving to the other side of the war on drugs, Cranston is riveting as Robert Mazur, a US Customs agent who masqueraded as a flashy, mob-connected money launderer in the mid-1980s to take down Colombia’s Medellín drug cartel.
As drugs flood into America through Florida, Mazur proposes an audacious scheme to cut off the flow by targeting the drug lords’ need to move money through legitimate channels around the world.
Rechristened Bob Musella and equipped with Customs-confiscated bling like expensive sports cars, lavish estates and jewelry — as well as a gorgeous young “fiancée” who’s a new Customs agent (Diane Kruger, effortlessly playing someone much younger than her 39 years) — Mazur works his way up the drug chain.
Reluctantly collaborating with street-smart Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo), Mazur earns the confidence of a well-connected, flamboyant psychopath (Yul Vazquez), leading to a warm if increasingly uncomfortable friendship with Robert Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt), Pablo Escobar’s head man in Miami.
Brad Furman, who previously directed Cranston in the colorful Matthew McConaughey sleeper “The Lincoln Lawyer,” does a great job of ratcheting up the tension as scene after scene notes the terrifying consequences if Mazur’s deception is exposed. (Most notably as he barely escapes being collateral damage when a philosophical informant played by Michael Paré is assassinated.)
Mazur’s high-wire act is contrasted with his daily life as a suburban dad with a wife he adores (Juliet Aubrey), who wishes her husband would take a retirement offer rather than risk all of their lives.
The screenplay, by the director’s mother, Ellen Brown Furman, can be a tad heavy-handed at times. But there’s never a dull moment from the Furmans in this very handsome production with a top-drawer cast that includes Amy Ryan as Mazur’s boss and Olympia Dukakis as his super-sharp aunt.
“The Infiltrator” satisfyingly builds to an improbable but ripped-from-the-headlines climax, as “Musella” brashly invites a slew of bad guys — including an array of crooked international bankers — to his phony Florida nuptials. There, media posing as wedding photographers cover the mass arrest of his guests.