You should know exactly what you’re getting with a film called Cocaine Bear – a tongue-in-cheek B-movie full of eccentric (but disposable) characters, ludicrous situations and over-the-top gore. On that level, while this film is by no means a classic, it delivers exactly what it set out to.

Premise: Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest, 1985 – when millions of dollars of cocaine are dumped from a plane by smugglers, drug kingpin Syd White (Ray Liotta) sends Daveed (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) to retrieve it, before it’s found by a local detective (Isiah Whitlock Jr.). Meanwhile, various other characters, including a nurse (Keri Russell) looking for her daughter who’s ditched school, venture into the forest as well – all unaware that an American black bear has eaten some of the cocaine and will do anything for another fix.

Review:

Don’t get too hung up on the “inspired by true events” label for this movie, because (thankfully) it isn’t in any real sense. The true story of the 'Cocaine Bear' is quite sad – essentially, the bear was simply found dead from an overdose after coming across the jettisoned cocaine – but this film has really only taken the central premise as its inspiration for an entirely fictional account of what could have happened. Thankfully, this means we can just enjoy the film for the B-movie romp that it sets out to be, rather than get too concerned about whether we’re indirectly laughing at real life tragedy.

That said, writer Jimmy Warden and director Elizabeth Banks have been careful to avoid representing the bear as a ‘villain’, making it clear throughout that although the bear does terrible things, often to undeserving victims, it’s not the bear’s fault that it’s out of its mind on cocaine. In fact, the film’s only real villain is local drug dealer Syd White (played by Ray Liotta in one of his final roles), but even then, Syd is mainly motivated by the threat of retribution from his bosses south of the border, than he is by personal greed.

“…Isiah Whitlock Jr.’s local detective was particularly amusing…”

The film is populated by a variety of eccentric characters who, by virtue of the fact that this is a tongue-in-cheek black comedy, are essentially tropes and cliches rather than fully realised characters. I thought that Isiah Whitlock Jr.’s local detective probably worked best in this regard, with a particularly amusing subplot involving a dog adoption, whereas Keri Russell’s mum searching for her daughter was a much more straightforward role. O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Alden Ehrenreich had some nice moments together as the underlings sent to retrieve the missing drugs, while the film also includes supporting roles for the likes of Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Kristofer Hivju as various other visitors to the Nations Forest.

But while all of the cast bring a lot of energy to their performances, I found that the film elicited more wry smiles from me than it did belly laughs. The film opens with an onscreen caption listing some surprising facts about American black bears … before going on to credit its source as “Wikipedia”. This opening joke sets the tone for the movie’s sense of humour, which is closer to the ‘amusing’ end of the comedy scale than it is to the ‘hilarious’ end.

“…the tone sometimes struggles to find a balance between the comedy & the gore…”

At the same time, Elizabeth Banks really doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the film’s gore – which is perhaps a little surprising, as it doesn’t always sit entirely comfortably alongside the comedy. Whereas a film like 2021’s Freaky could present over-the-top violence in a darkly humorous way so that audiences laughed at the same time they were wincing, the violence in Cocaine Bear can be very brutal at times, but in a way that sometimes feels just a little too grounded. Overall, the tone of the movie sometimes struggles to find a balance between the comedy and the gore. This is only Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director (after the straight-up comedy Pitch Perfect 2 and the underrated action-packed Charlie’s Angels reboot), and it may be that the tonal shifts in this movie were the hardest element to get a handle on.

If you were really looking to nit-pick, you could point out that the CGI bear isn’t always entirely convincing, and the plot is almost non-existent – but both of these criticisms miss the point: firstly, for a relatively low-budget studio film, the CGI is pretty damn impressive, and secondly, when all is said and done, Cocaine Bear is essentially a disaster movie, and in a disaster movie, the plot is never much more than ‘the characters try to survive’.

“…kept me amused throughout…”

But really, who’s coming to see a movie called Cocaine Bear and expecting high art or subtlety? This movie isn’t an unqualified success by any stretch, but it kept me amused throughout, and as high-concept B-movies go, this is far better than the likes of Snakes on a Plane.