Based on a true story, this made-for-cable film tells about Barry Seal, a pilot who was a drug smuggler for the infamous Medellin cartel out of Colombia. He was caught by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and decided to turn over and help the DEA break the cartel. However, he got caught in the middle of the Reagan/Bush administration efforts to topple the Nicaraguan government in the '80s, in which Nicaraguan rebels called "contras" were allowed to smuggle cocaine into the US in exchange for their fighting against the leftist Nicaraguan government. Eventually Seal was murdered by his former Medellin employers, and some critics say it was with the tacit, if not implicit, connivance of the US administration.
Acting
Dennis Hopper's sweaty, desperate energy as a man who knows too much.
Writing
The script doesn't flinch from naming names—Reagan, Bush, actual history.
Direction
Roger Young's workmanlike tension before prestige TV existed.
Director
Roger Young
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This aired on HBO in 1991, years before the Iran-Contra affair became common knowledge, making it genuinely transgressive television.
Dennis Hopper reportedly took the role because he found Seal's actual story unbelievable—and then read the declassified documents.
US
