AfricanKing
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The Guardian
All druglord sagas are alike. A driven young man with a flash of insane ambition in his eyes, who’s smarter, more brutal or luckier than his rivals, rapidly ascends a teetering mountain of cash, corpses and addictive substances. Then his appetite for success overtakes him and there’s a reckoning.
Netflix already controls this corner of the market via Narcos, its swaggering bio-drama about Pablo Escobar and the Colombian cocaine trade. In lieu of a fourth season of that, the standalone Narcos: Mexico moves north to profile Guadalajara kingpin Félix Gallardo, who made millions by uniting disparate regional marijuana dealers in a price-fixing gang, then couldn’t resist gambling on diversifying into coke.
CNN
After beginning with Pablo Escobar in Colombia, "Narcos" shifted to the Cali cartel, an equally colorful and bloodthirsty bunch. The latest change of scenery adds considerable star power, with Diego Luna as Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, the savvy drug lord seeking to consolidate power across Mexico in the 1980s; and Michael Pena as Kiki Camarena,the gung-ho DEA agent who ultimately met a tragic end (previously turned into a 1990 miniseries).
"Someone should call D.C. and tell them we surrendered Guadalajara," Camarena grouses early on, chafing against what he sees as the handcuffs placed on his agency by feckless superiors.
Both sides of the equation are fascinating, with Gallardo seeking to forge an uneasy peace among the various drug kingpins -- in what only can be likened to the mob families parceling off Cuba in "The Godfather Part II" -- establishing Mexico's first narco-union. (Gallardo was appropriately known as "El Padrino," or "The Godfather.")
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