Cocaine Cowboys (2006)

Set during the cocaine wars of the late '70s and early '80s, this documentary is out to reveal how Miami vice really worked: less glitz, even crazier piles of cash (the city's swank skyline was just about built on drug money), and far uglier violence. Cocaine Cowboys, which at times seems like it could have been edited by someone on coke, comes at you as a vast bloody river of underworld information, though you may wish you'd gotten to know former trafficker Jon Roberts and former pilot Mickey Munday beyond their bank accounts and apparent obliviousness to danger. The most colorful hard case: Griselda Blanco, a homicidal Colombian ''Godmother'' who, no lie, makes Tony Montana look like Mother Teresa.