Facing

Pablo Escobar was a complex phenomenon but not an especially unique one. Anyone who goes after a government using the same tactics as the government is invariably a criminal at least in terms of the State. Velupillai Prabhakharan used similar criminal activities through out the Western world to fund his own operations in Sri Lanka. Of the two it would be fair to say Escobar did more to ameliorate the trials of the poor than Prabhakaran, but both progressed through assassination and then all out war. What the documentary does not talk about is that Escobar's operation was undermined by a group who eventually became the Contras and one way or another poor Gary North paid with his life and his reputation for exposing that. Overall this documentary would serve history better by explaining the international environment in which all this occurred.