One of the most notorious criminals of all time, and also said to be the wealthiest in history, Pablo Escobar inspires yet another television series “Narcos”. Although Escobar has been fictionalized on screen various times over the years – “Blow” in 2001, “Escobar: Paradise Lost” in 2014 – the upcoming Netflix series chooses to focus exclusively on the rise and fall of the Colombian cocaine kingpin and the Medellín drug cartel.“Narcos” is a ten-episode crime drama series by Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha, who directed the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear Award-winning Portuguese film “Elite Squad” and the 2014 remake of “Robocop”. It stars Brazilian actor Wagner Moura (“Elysium”, the “Elite Squad” films) in the lead role as Escobar and Chilean-American film and television actor Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell of “Game of Thrones”) as Javier Peña, a Mexican DEA agent sent to capture and kill Escobar. As Netflix’s second period drama, “Narcos” is set in the 1980s, at the time of the drug wars, and goes by the tagline “There’s No Business like Blow Business.”The Medellín cartel was formed by an alliance between Escobar, the Ochoa family, Carlos Lehder and Rodriguez Gacha, and this group seized control of all drug traffic between Colombia and the U.S.A. for almost a decade. Escobar, who was instrumental in putting this cartel together, came to be known as ‘The King of Cocaine’ while also cultivating a Robin Hood image with the Colombian poor. However, he commissioned hits on hundreds of policemen and politicians, turning Colombia into the murder capital of the world. The governments of U.S.A. and Colombia finally joined hands to crackdown on the cocaine cartel and put an end to the narcoterrorism.One thing this crime drama is guaranteed to deliver is grit and violence, and if it takes any lessons at all from the 2010 three-part TV mini series “Carlos” (French-German biographical film on 1970s Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal), it’ll do just fine. And a “Carlos”-meets-“The Wolf of Wall Street” combo might just be a recipe for success. The series premieres on August 28, 2015, on Netflix.Follow @ARTINFOIndia
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