"Narcos" on Netflix?

STYLZ

STYLZ

Well-known member
Anyone else loving the heck out of this show? Absolutely brilliant. It's like a long movie... an excellent one at that. So well done. They did their research, except their military consultant is kind of questionable as some weapons/accessories in the show weren't created until decades after this time period. Other than that though this show is damn near flawless. What's your take?
 
By the book storytelling. Just like every other average film in this genre. I didn't find it anything special. Absolutely brilliant is something I would use for a show like "The Wire." but not Narcos.
 
I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's far from "The Wire" territory but it does a good job of putting a human face on the carnage the drug wars caused. There are characters that come and go that you truly feel for and that's hard to pull off in a series like this. Casting is pretty good too. Especially for Pablo and Javier.
 
i think its pretty perfect....i really like the way it feels constrained without missing anything and not in any way flashy....this could be so much like a music video and it is not....also really refreshing to see everybody actually speaking in their language.....i think it is the best show i have seen in a long time....
anyone know what it was shot on?
side note: it just blows my mind (not sure if this is true of course) that a DEA agent in miami does not speak spanish and gets sent to colombia without any spanish knowledge....crazy....
 
Yeah, I'm a bit different in that I don't require fancy story telling mechanisms or methods, although I do appreciate when it is done well. I'm also not into all these super hero movies and remakes that Hollywood is pooping out. I've never seen "The Wire", which might be a good thing for now, as I don't have the need to compare every movie/show to it. I will have to definitely watch it at some point. All in all I just need a story that engages me, one that keeps me interested in the progression of the characters/story, one that causes me to suspend disbelief and lose myself in the story or in the characters thoughts and emotions. If I'm focused on or distracted by the story telling mechanisms themselves as opposed to the story itself, then the film isn't doing it's job in my opinion.
 
Paul schefz said:
i think its pretty perfect....i really like the way it feels constrained without missing anything and not in any way flashy....this could be so much like a music video and it is not....also really refreshing to see everybody actually speaking in their language.....i think it is the best show i have seen in a long time....
anyone know what it was shot on?
side note: it just blows my mind (not sure if this is true of course) that a DEA agent in miami does not speak spanish and gets sent to colombia without any spanish knowledge....crazy....
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I can endorse this fully.

The director made a couple of films which I enjoyed quite a bit (Elite Squad and Elite Squad: Enemy Within), and which were a kind of preparation, I feel, for this series. The biggest thing that this series has, is that it's based on reality, and has this feeling of not having to exaggerate to make you engage - The Wire was the same way. But note the exaggeration - I loved Breaking Bad, but since it was not based on reality, it had quite a few things where they stretched the "drama" way too far into unrealistic territory which took away some of my enjoyment.

What's great of course is the setting - shot in Colombia... just love that! And using Spanish with subtitles rather than the fake accent thing that is used so often. All in the service of REALITY. The actors are fantastic too, except the DEA agent played by Boyd Holbrook, who I am sorry to say, feels like an actor, feels weak, basically a hollywood creature posturing, no depth, no cred, thin, thinny, thin thin - he sucks, IMHO... definitely poor casting.

As to the "message" such as there is - honestly, I don't see one pushed too strongly... which is good, IMHO, because if they pushed any message, you'd immediately have people lining up on the other side, no matter what the message and which side! It may seem obvious - "drugs are baaaad, man!" "look at these terrible monsters drug pushers, inhuman criminals", "brave DEA and The Law fighting for truth and justice" etc. and just as quickly you'd have people lining up on the other side, pointing out that the problem is demand, not supply, and criminalization - as if we learned nothing from Prohibition, we too had monsters like Al Capone and others, and corruption of police, politicians and so on... all because of prohibition, then we legalized booze again, and all that vanished like last years snow... are Colombians any more to blame for shipping drugs to a craving world than were the Canadians shipping booze to thirsty Americans? So, better stay away from "messages" and just tell us "this is what happened".
 
i think this shows perfectly why netflix is doing so well....get a great director and a great lead actor, even if they are not well known in the US and give them enough freedom....not that i don't like HBO shows (on the contrary) but i get the feeling this would have been very different on HBO....
been thinking about what this was shot on....being netflix they probably did not do arri because of 4K, that leaves red or sony....i am thinking sony....
 
I love Narcos, one of the best shows I have watched on Netflix.. I love the fact that it is a Netflix show too! Shot on RED :)
 
STYLZ said:
Anyone else loving the heck out of this show? Absolutely brilliant. It's like a long movie... an excellent one at that. So well done. They did their research, except their military consultant is kind of questionable as some weapons/accessories in the show weren't created until decades after this time period. Other than that though this show is damn near flawless. What's your take?
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In episode eight, Pablo's mistress is coming from a later BMW 5-series model. The same for the water tap of a bathtube in some other part of the series. This kind of mistakes doesn't make sense and the talent invested there wouldn't deserve such lack of professionalism. For a simple reason: it would be much easier to not fail in certain part of the road. Some have no respect for the others' work. To be part of the crew means to honor the rest of the team.

Sorry for these two cents of criticism from whom praises the gift of many others involved there, as well, their performance as ultimate outcome.

E :)
 
Any time you're doing a period piece like that, there's bound to be mistakes, unless you have an unlimited budget. Hopefully, most of the mistakes will not be noticeable to the majority of the audience, so people are not thrown out of their suspension of disbelief. For example, my wife informed me, that in Narcos, the opening footage with the woman moving her hand over her leg - the style of nails is extremely contemporary and simply did not exist in the 70's 80's 90's etc. Now, I couldn't tell one style of women's nails from another, so to me, it never even registered... but apparently to some women in the audience that was a mistake; in turn, my wife can't tell one car from another, so she would never notice if the car did not belong to the era, unless you're talking about the 1920's and show a car from today. So you can't do it perfectly - but as long as you don't get the ENTIRE audience to scream at the same time about some huge mistake, you can get away with it. Anyhow, overall, I didn't find these mistakes to disqualify the whole series - it just didn't bother me. YMMV.
 
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