– "Cocaine Bear" is a new movie directed by Elizabeth Banks that tells the story of a real-life black bear who ingested 70 pounds of cocaine that was dropped from a plane in 1985.
– The film is a fictionalized account of the events that followed, including the bear's wild drug-induced rampage through the woods of rural Georgia.
– The movie features a love story between two human characters, DEA agents played by Keri Russell and John Boyega, who are pursuing the cocaine smugglers responsible for the bear's ingestion of the drugs.
– The bear, played by a mix of animatronics and CGI, is a central character in the film and is portrayed as both menacing and sympathetic.
– Critics have praised the film's dark humor and Banks' direction, but some have criticized it for being too tonally inconsistent and uneven in its pacing.
– The article notes that the real-life events that inspired the film were tragic, as the bear died from the cocaine overdose, and the human casualties of the drug trade are often overlooked.
– However, the film uses the absurdity of the story to comment on larger themes of greed, addiction, and the destructive consequences of the war on drugs.