Cocaine Bear Review: Elizabeth Banks’ B-Movie Blends Your Favorite Genres

The promotional posters will tell you that Cocaine Bear is “inspired by true events.” And as the movie begins with a nonstop ’80s-themed soundtrack, opening title cards give us a quick breakdown of the dangers to be expected with wild bears. The source of these facts? “Wikipedia.”

Director Elizabeth Banks (who also helmed Charlie’s Angels and Pitch Perfect) knows exactly what she’s doing in this fashion. She’s a terrific actor, as evidenced in past such projects including Mrs. America and her recent starring vehicle Call Jane. But she’s solely behind the camera here for Cocaine Bear, which is now in theaters. It’s well aware of its gory, B-movie nature, with perhaps little else to offer. But the film’s writer, Jimmy Warden, seems to know what’s up when it comes to this kind of potential franchise kickstarter, as he already has Cocaine Bear sequels in mind.

If nothing else, it’s a treat seeing the late, great Ray Liotta here, joining the story’s gang of drug dealer characters that are trying to find their stash of drugs across the Georgia forest. If Cocaine Bear is indeed Liotta’s swan song, he might be upstairs laughing away — but in a good way.

Blending Your Favorite Genres

In the recent past, Universal Pictures has taken some chances with other commercial projects that mashed different film genres. Think M3GAN (horror, sci-fi, and comedy) and Violent Night (holiday, action, and comedy). And now there’s Cocaine Bear (thriller, action, and comedy), inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, the missing cocaine that was traveling with it, and the black bear that ate it. It’s a wildly, darkly comedic retelling that finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converging in a Georgia forest, where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of drugs and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more. If several humans get torn to pieces along the way, so be it — says the bear.

Following the film’s aforementioned “Wikipedia” intro, the laughs continue as we see an eccentric drug dealer (played by The Americans star Matthew Rhys) as he chucks bags of blow out of a moving plane. He readies himself to jump with a parachute — but then bumps his head as he takes off. Fill in the blanks as to what happens to the poor man next.

Related: Elizabeth Banks Reminisces About Working Alongside Ray Liotta on Cocaine Bear

Keri Russell plays the film’s moral center, a mom who ultimately needs to rescue her teenage daughter who’s snuck off to the forest with her troublemaking pal. In addition to Ray Liotta as Syd, there’s a not-so-dynamic duo of his henchmen, played by O’Shea Jackson Jr. (Ingrid Goes West, Long Shot) as Daveed and Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) as Eddie, who also happens to be Syd’s son.

More About the True Story

In the real world, Andrew Carter Thornton II was a major player in a vast cocaine trafficking network known as The Company run by the notorious Jamiel “Jimmy” Chagra. In Cocaine Bear, Thornton’s employer is Syd (Liotta), a drug kingpin based in St. Louis whose mobile office is often a fast-food joint.

When Thornton drops his cocaine in the Georgia forest and dies before he can tell Syd where he dropped it, Syd needs someone to retrieve it. The very silly tale that then plays out on the big screen is worth seeing for the laughs, despite the frequent ultraviolent shots along the way. They might make you hide your eyes, as they give movies like Kick-Ass a run for their money. But in terms of comedy, Isiah Whitlock Jr. is also reliably fun to watch. Here he plays a detective who simply misses his puppy as he tries to track down the drugs and the dealers across the forest. A gun stand-off between the hotheaded characters played by Whitlock and O’Shea Jackson Jr. is another highlight.

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Elizabeth Banks grew up watching and loving late ’70s and ’80s movies, and she says she immediately saw the potential with Cocaine Bear to pay homage to that era, but also to create a hilarious, gory, entertaining ride for audiences. “For me, as an audience member, and as somebody who had aspired to make films, I have always loved horror and comedy together,” Banks said in a statement. “Horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin to me. The best thing you can do is take the audience on a real roller coaster, making them laugh, making them scream, making them jump. That’s what the goal was in making this film. I really felt like this was the opportunity to layer real true comedy, laugh-out-loud moments, with a real sense of suspense and a lot of gore, and have a great time with this big, bright, broad idea of this bear that’s going to fuck some people up.”

Cocaine Bear comes to us from Universal Pictures.