'Cocaine Bear' (2023)

I was no fit state to see this last night and as it was, I still had to eat pretty much an entire packet of Soothers so that I wasn't coughing the whole way through the film. I just about managed it, timing the unavoidable coughs to coincide with particularly noisy deaths on the big screen. I did it though, I've finally seen 'Cocaine Bear' and it was the most fun I've had in a long time :o)

You probably know the plot already but here goes... Bags containing millions of dollars of cocaine are thrown from an aeroplane and scattered across a national park. Drug dealer Syd White wants his cocaine back and sends his son, Eddie, and his fixer Daveed to retrieve as much as they can; nurse Sari is also on the scene but all she's after is finding her runaway daughter before anything bad happens. Something like a Black Bear with a hair trigger temper and a real hankering for cocaine...

A film like 'Cocaine Bear' only really needs to do one thing right and that's to live up to the potential of all that chaos lurking in the title. Well, I'm more than happy to tell you that it did, it really did. An hour and a half of a coked up bear tearing the woods up and taking time to make sure that anyone crossing it's path does not have a good day. It's a movie crammed full of jump scares punctuated by body parts being torn off and innards finally getting a chance to see what life in the outside world is like. There's enough variety in the deaths (and enough plot to back them up) that it doesn't feel like the movie is stuck in a groove. For me, trailers are notoriously bad at showing all the good stuff and leaving me wondering if there will be any surprises left when I get to the cinema. I won't give too much away but there is still plenty to see and the hour and a half just flew by.

That would be plenty enough by itself but the movie also has a sense of humour about it (with a title like 'Cocaine Bear', it has to really) that is part playful, part vicious. It all adds to the chaotic energy of the film and the cast do their bit as well. For me, Christian Convery's Henry and Margo Martindale's Ranger Liz were the real scene stealers but you know that if Ray Liotta had been given a little more screen time, he would have stolen the show. Liotta isn't doing anything here that he hadn't already done in other movies (nasty bastard gangster) but he did it so well that it must have been a real no-brainer to get him to do it one more time. RIP Ray.

'Cocaine Bear' isn't going to change cinema but it entertained the hell out of me after a shitty week and that's far more important from where I'm sat. Nice work there 'Cocaine Bear', nice work...