MAKING TRACKS

“Cocaine Bear” and The Quiet Girl.”

- ANTHONY LANE

Darkness falls. Out in the woods, under the pelting of a pitiless storm, a middle-aged American male, stripped to the waist, fights a furious bear. This elemental sequence comes from a 1977 film, scarily titled “Day of the Animals,” and the joy of it is that the battling man is played by Leslie Nielsen, and that the movie is not repeated, not—intended as a comedy. What, you may ask, could top that?

One answer is “Cocaine Bear,” a new film written by Jimmy Warden and directed by Elizabeth Banks. Allegedly, it’s based on true events, in much the same way that “Pinocchio” is based on string theory. Our story begins with duffle bags of cocaine being tossed out of a plane over the Chattahoochee National Forest, in 1985. The bags belong to a drug dealer, Syd (Ray Liotta), and he wants them safely gathered in. To that end, his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), and a henchman, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.), are dispatched to the great green wilds of Georgia. Also in attendance, and innocent of any crime, is a nurse named Sari (Keri Russell). She, too, is desperately seeking what is lost— her thirteen-year-old daughter, Deirdre, or Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), who has skipped school and gone hiking with her friend Henry (Christian Convery). Law enforcement is represented by a cop from out of state, Bob (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), and a local ranger, Liz (Margo Martindale). The animal kingdom is represented by a butterfly, a deer, and a black bear. Only one of these is on cocaine, although with butterflies you can never really tell.