Based on real events: In the mid-1980s a federal agent (Bryan Cranston) works undercover in the vicious drug-trafficking business of Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar. Fellow agents (Diane Kruger and John Leguizamo) help him pose as a money-laundering businessman to gain the confidence of Escobar's lieutenant (Benjamin Bratt) and arrange a mass arrest. Also with Amy Ryan, Yul Vázquez, Joseph Gilgun and Said Taghmaoui. Directed by Brad Furman. Several lines of dialogue are in Spanish without translation or subtitles and a few lines of dialogue are in Spanish with English subtitles. [2:07]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - Two strippers wear bras, panties, garter belts and hosiery as they perform lap dances for clothed men, nearly kissing them; one woman moves her head at the groin area of the man while performing oral sex (we do not see details) and the other man refuses sex with the other woman.
► A man and a woman kiss briefly in two scenes. A man and a woman kiss each other on the cheek and hug in a couple of scenes. Two scenes show a man and a woman hugging for several seconds and in one of those scenes they almost kiss.
► Six women wearing only body paint and tight panties dance as lights shine on them on a dark stage; as they wiggle slightly and sway, we see exposed breasts, abdomens and full bodies (except the crotch area). Three fan dancers with large feather fans perform, revealing bare thighs briefly; one woman appears to be wearing feather pasties over her nipples when a man picks her up and turns in a circle with her (her fans cover everything except lower legs and the top of the breasts). A dancer is seen in full back nudity, swaying on a dance floor with her buttocks jiggling slightly. Two strippers wearing low-cut leotards reveal moderate cleavage while lying on straight back chairs and gyrating to music as we look down from an aerial view.
► We see a few waitresses in a club wearing micro-miniskirts and blouses that expose moderate cleavage. A woman wears a tight mini dress. A woman wears a long wedding gown that is low cut to reveal moderate cleavage. A man falls on the floor after being shot (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) and we see his briefs with his trousers around his knees. A man stuffs money into the front of his trousers and later pulls it out below the frame. We look upwards to see the silhouette of a woman swimming (no details are visible).
► A man tells drug dealers that he cannot have sex with a stripper because he is engaged. A man walks behind two women and says, "Wow!" Thugs tell a man that he must have sex with another man and he refuses violently; he is then told it was a joke. A woman reads a man's palm and says that he is sexy. A wife asks a woman if she is sleeping with the wife's husband and the reply is "no."

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - Three men argue in a house and two of the men shove each other while shouting; one man says, "I'm going to kill you, man," and takes money out of the front of his trousers and throws it to the floor (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) as the third man draws a pistol and shoots the money man in the head (the head is off-screen); blood splashes in close-up onto the faces of the shooter and the other man as they laugh. A blindfolded man is taken on a rough ride to an outlying area where he is shoved into a room in a building and forced to kneel beside another kneeling man; a Voodoo priest mumbles an incantation in an unknown language and drips chicken blood in close-up on an altar, then cuts the bird's head off (we see the head and neck lying on the altar) and the priest shoots one man in the head and we see some blood gush as he falls off-screen (the other man looks frightened and is released). A man enters a loud club and approaches a table while muttering that Baby Jesus protects his illegal money; he goes to the dance floor where he is shot three times in the back and he falls face up on the floor, where blood flows out of his chest and makes a large pool on the floor.
► Drug dealers, drug lords and corrupt international bankers fill the audience at a wedding as sirens sound and police enter while shooting; men and women scream and run or duck to the floor and a few scuffles occur as men and women are arrested and one man is shot in the chest in close-up (his chest is covered in blood as he falls); a man, his wife, and his young teen daughter are arrested as the wife spews curses and a man on a gurney is wheeled across the background as a caption reads that over 100 drug dealers and money-launderers were charged and many were convicted.
► A man in a car tells a passenger, "The Good Book says don't lie, don't steal," and goes on to say that doesn't stop drug dealers as two people on a motorcycle drive close by and one shoots into the car, which crashes into two other cars, flips, and lands on its roof with a loud crash; one man crawls out of the car with blood all over his shirt and dripping from a scalp cut; he is shaky and looks frightened as he runs away (we hear that the other man was found dead).
► A man in a washroom puts a trash bag over another man's head, slams him into a mirror that breaks, then slams him down onto a toilet seat before shooting twice into the stall from an angle (we do not see the victim), and he leaves. A man listens to a drug deal while in a closet, sneaks out after the dealers leave and another man with a gun comes up off a couch; the first man takes the gun while choking the gunman and then leaves.
► Police officers shoot several times in an alley and break into a mansion. A man in a car chokes a male friend and threatens to burn his face with a cigarette, but releases him. A man and a woman at a restaurant table are joined by another man wearing a pistol in a holster inside his jacket; the first man shouts at a waiter several times before slamming the waiter's face down into a large cake. A prisoner kicks a court reporter's desk as he is led out of a courtroom. A man visits a prisoner and gives him what looks like a hamburger.
► A man receives an envelope in the mail and his young daughter touches it (it is leaking blood and her hands become bloody); her mother panics and takes her off-screen as the man opens the envelope and finds a Voodoo warning (a small coffin covered in blood that gets onto both his hands).
► A man leaves a restaurant and fakes a painful appendicitis attack, falling to the ground as several police officers with guns drawn arrest his companion for drug offenses; the first man enters an EMT vehicle where a listening device is pulled from his chest (leaving a raw patch and some blood). A man runs through an industrial yard to avoid police officers. A car with a revving engine follows a jogger who runs into a yard, then back to the pavement where the car pulls alongside him, revs its engine, and the driver wearing dark sunglasses drives away.
► A man tells another man that drug lords will cut off the second man's fingers, toes, and eyelids, cut off the heads of his family members, and then kill him. A man tells a federal agent that another agent has been following the agent. A husband and his wife argue a few times about the man's work. Two men argue in a few scenes. A man and woman argue briefly and the man leaves. A man takes a new identity from information on a headstone in a graveyard. A woman dressed all in black never speaks and has dense tattoo designs covering her forearms and her neck. In a money-laundering international bank's auditorium, the president of the bank stands at a podium and tells an audience that they are blessed and righteous.

LANGUAGE 10 - About 79 F-words and its derivatives, 2 sexual references, 17 scatological terms, 14 anatomical terms, 5 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, nuts, loco, white people, piece of work, faggot, homo, crooked man with a cape, two-faced drug pusher, Bobby Loser), exclamations (wow), 3 religious profanities (GD), 10 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Jesus God, Holy [scatological term deleted]).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man gives a very large capsule of an illegal drug to a waitress who takes it off-screen, men in a warehouse load cocaine into large salmon cans in Columbia and send it to the US (we hear that it is 2,500 pounds of cocaine, worth billions of dollars), a caption states that trillions of dollars are made in the illegal drug business and that the CIA used some of the income to fund wars outside America in the 80s, a police officer dumps several kilos of cocaine onto a floor in a video, a man tells foreign bankers that his clients sell cocaine and the bankers help him "launder" the money, and a Columbian drug lord says that America put him into the drug business. Men drink from beer bottles in several scenes, a few men and a few women drink from short glasses of whiskey in a few scenes, an unopened bottle of wine is seen on a kitchen counter and several empty beer bottles are shown on a coffee table, three men each drinks a shot of tequila, ten men and a woman drink champagne around a pool and a bottle of the wine is shown in an ice bucket, three people at a café table drink a bottle and glasses of alcohol, two couples drink wine in a kitchen and after dinner, and two men drink brandy and smoke cigars after dinner. Dozens of scenes feature men and a few women smoking cigarettes and cigars in homes and offices as well as an empty courtroom and restaurants, a man smokes both a cigarette and a cigar at an indoor pool, and men and women smoke and drink glasses of whiskey in a few scenes.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - South American drug cartels, the drug abuse epidemic in America, the US clandestine services, international crime, murder, undercover work, danger, determination, courage, lying, relationships, friendship, love, trust, betrayal, justice.

MESSAGE - Undercover narcotics work is emotionally draining and dangerous. The 1980s included a major cocaine abuse epidemic and widespread money laundering.