Netflix docuseries Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami was released on the streaming service on August 4, 2021.

You can’t argue the sense of style and full-throttle pace that Billy Corben brings to Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami. Full of waves, beautiful women, and more blow than the grains of sand of endless stretches of Miami beaches. A docuseries fueled by drug-infused fervor captures the Los Muchachos’s hubris as they imported over 75 tons of cocaine into America. But, hell. Let’s talk about that excessive pride again. One of their lieutenants corrected the interviews on the spot– it was more like 175.

These cowboys/kings allegedly were Cuban exiles Augusto “Willy” Falcon and Salvador “Sal” Magluta, two of the main distributors for Colombia’s biggest drug cartels. They built a 2 billion dollar business, recruiting fellow Cubans, some in high school, to help distribute their insatiable product across the state. They had money and fame, even became world champion powerboat racers.

They managed to outmaneuver the federal government for years. How? Their moves ranged from simple bribes to changing a document’s wording (Falcon had an order for a 14-month prison sentence. Somehow it was changed to he had served 14 months and was released, after he was arrested for hosing out after being placed on the most wanted list), jury tampering or filling the pastel-colored streets with the blood of murdered witnesses.

Corben’s docuseries is insanely entertaining and strangely disengaged with the gravity of the situation, which is not a drawback but more of a commentary on our society’s unquenched appetite for the macabre. It’s vivid, captivating, and almost absurd the way these cowboys kept dodging their crimes. Somehow, the Cuban community in Miami had embraced these men as saviors. The Robin Hoods of South Florida.

Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami ranks as one of Netflix’s best crime docuseries. And their catalog is full of them. It has its own unique sense of style. Filled with interviews of offbeat, eccentric characters that would feel over-the-top if written for a fictional film, it’s practically begging to be revisited as an episodic television series or movie. But then again, why? This one is too good on its own.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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M.N. Miller

Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami review – colorful and offbeat at a feverish The "blow" back.