Drugs, sex, violence, and bad acting. That seems to be the formula that inspired the team behind Puerto Rico’s latest forgettable narco-thriller Los Reyes: La verdadera historia de buster y el camaleón, which will be premiering in Puerto Rican cinemas on December 4.
Following the antisocial escapades of Angel Manuel Ayala Vazquez “El Buster”, and José Figueroa Agosto “El Camaleón” — two of the Caribbean’s most notorious drug kingpins — the recently released trailer is replete with bad lighting, questionable framing, a generic thriller soundtrack likely downloaded from any number of royalty-free music websites, and heaps of bad taste to boot.
In real life, the rags-to-riches-to-prison story of these two notorious figures is certainly the stuff of screenplays, so there is hope that the movie might be slightly better than the trailer. Figueroa is known for having evaded federal authorities for ten years, skipping Puerto Rico for Dominican Republic after escaping from a 209-year sentence in federal prison for murder and illegal weapons possession. Operating under several aliases, Figueroa went so far as to surgically alter his features to avoid being identified (or look more like William Levy, which is my personal theory).
For his part, Ayala was known for his humble beginnings washing cars at a Shell station in the city of Bayamón before rising up the underworld ranks to become the largest figure in Puerto Rican drug trafficking, moving over $100 million into legitimate business over the course of ten years.
They say, “Don’t judge a film by it’s trailer” (or is it “a book by its cover”?), but I’ll personally be sitting this one out. Unless, of course, it pops up on Netflix and I’m in the mood for a good laugh.