★★★★
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
We’ve written about Griselda Blanco before. In particular, we reviewed telenovela La Viuda Negra, which was loosely based on her life and compared it to the facts. We also covered Cocaine Godmother, in which Catherine Zeta-Jones took on the role of Blanco in a bio-more-or-less-pic. She remains a fascinating character, so you won’t be surprised that when I heard about a new documentary concerning her life, it went straight to near the top of my watch-list. I was a little concerned, since it came out as a “Tubi Original”. I’ve been burned by some of these before, and so was expecting a lurid, shallow TMZ-style expose which played fast and loose with the truth.
To my pleasant surprise, that’s not the case at all. Obviously, there’s a certain allure here, but it doesn’t needlessly glamourize or condemn its subject, and instead manages to do a good job of painting both sides, and depicting Griselda as a surprisingly complex character. This is particularly clear at the end, when her youngest son – named, amusingly, Michael Corleone – says of his mother, “Yes, it’s a legacy of violence. But she was a woman that had to become savage in a world that wasn’t made for her.” Then Detective Diaz, who headed the Miami task force charged with bringing her down, counters, “We have this bitch from hell who decides she wants to be meaner and more powerful than anybody else… Violence. Arrogance. Greed. That is her legacy.” Take your pick!
It covers Blanco’s entire career, from growing up poor in Cartagena, through her (illegal) emigration into America, where she got into the drug business, and built an empire which brought her a fortune estimated (likely conservatively) in hundreds of millions of dollars. With this came enemies on both sides of the law, but Blanco almost seemed to feel she was invulnerable, and continued acting with impunity, until first the authorities and then her foes, eventually caught up with her. They’ve got some very good interview subjects, with Michael in particular standing out. His description of how he witnessed his father being gunned down on a Colombian street is chilling.
Cops, journalists and even other criminals also chip in, and it’s edited skilfully together to tell a complex story with clarity. Another interesting character I’m going to have to look into is Jemeker Thompson-Hairston, the “Queen of crack” who served time alongside Blanco in federal prison. One of the key players in the eighties crack epidemic, she’s now an evangelist, and came over as very well-spoken and thoughtful. I do have to say, something about narrator Elena Hurst’s voice kinda grated on me. Perhaps it was the way she’d apparently adopt an outrageous Spanish accent, any time she said the subject’s name: “Greez-hel-dahh”. Overall though, this manages to be both informative and entertaining, even if it is perhaps helped by having a story it would be difficult to screw up.
Dir: Victoria Duley
Star: Michael Corleone Blanco, Bob Palombo, Raul Diaz, Dr. Amy Shlosberg