Cocaine bear is a comedy horror American movie directed by Elizabeth banks and written by jimmy warden. This film is inspired by a true story of the cocaine bear, a black American bear that ingested over 75 lbs. of lost cocaine that was thrown over from an airplane by a drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II in 1985.
The film begins with a drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II in the year 1985 as he drops a shipment of cocaine from his plane. In the attempt to parachute himself out with a duffel bag filled with cocaine he knocks himself unconscious on the door frame, this leads to his death as he falls thousands of feet from the sky to the ground. His body is found and identified by Bob , a local detective. Bobs concludes that the cocaine is likely from St. Louis drug kingpin, Syd white and there is a remainder of the cocaine.
However, in the chattahoochee-oconee National forest, an American black bear who was looking for food stumbles on this duffel bag full of cocaine and consumes most of it. This bear becomes very aggressive and attacks two hikers and it kills one of the hikers.
A young middle schooler named Dee Dee who lives with her mother in the Northeast ditch school with her best friend Henry, in order to paint a picture of the falls in the forest. On the trail leading to the falls, they find a brick of cocaine and ingest some before they are attacked by the bear. Dee Dee’s mother Sari, noting her daughter missing, ventures into the forest in search of the kids with two park rangers, Liz and peter. The trio finds Henry clinging to a tree in an attempt to hide from the bear.
On sighting them, the bear attacks, sending Peter stumbling through a pile of cocaine and slashes Liz in the process, wounding her. The bear is now attracted to a cocaine-coated peter, the bear kills him, ignoring Henry. On seeing this, Sari and Henry flee deeper into the forest while Liz sends for help.
Meanwhile in St. Louis, Syd sends Daveed his fixer to retrieve the remaining cocaine. Daveed and Eddie travel to Georgia, Eddie is Syd’s son. They both arrived in Georgia just immediately when Bob arrived. Daveed gets into a fight with Duchamp’s gang at the first station. One of the members, Stache, takes Daveed and Eddie to recover some of the cocaine he found and had stashed at his place.
Liz on her part is being chased by the bear, she arrives at the forest station and accidentally kills Ponytail, one of the Duchamp, then the bear slaughters vests, the other Duchamp member. Paramedics arrive and collect Liz after a brief encounter with the bear. They leave with Liz but they are attacked by the bear who had jumped into the moving van and killed Tom, one of the paramedics amidst the chaos. Liz falls off the ambulance and gets crushed on the road while Beth loses control of the van and crashes into the tree.
The bear continues to kill more people as the story progresses, Sari and Henry discover Dee Dee left them a trail of paint which they use to track her. On their way as they follow the trail, they meet a mourning Olaf who leads them to dee Dee’s hiding place: the bear’s cave containing its two cubs. Syd, Eddie and Daveed find the cave, which leads out to a ledge behind the falls. The bear returns, sari, henry and dee dee jumps into the water below to safety, followed by Eddie and Daveed.
However, Syd refuses to leave the bag of cocaine found in the cave. He is killed by the bear and her cubs right after he shot and wounded the bear.
Cocaine Bear Review
The film is inspired slightly by the true events surrounding a 175-pound American bear that died after eating and digesting a duffel bag full of cocaine in December 1985.
Andrew C. Thornton II, a former narcotic officer and one time convicted drug smuggler had dropped the cocaine out of the airplane he piloted because his plane was carrying way too heavy load and his plane was been followed by another government airplane in an attempt to to take him down and arrest him for trafficking of hard drugs.
After dropping the cocaine successfully, Thornton then jumps out of the airplane with a faulty parachute and dies by falling to his death. Then a hungry black American bear comes in search of food and finds the bag full of cocaine and devours the contents. After consuming a large quantity of the drugs, the bear dies almost immediately, and was found three months later in Northern Georgia. The bear is currently on display at the Kentucky mall and is named “Cocaine Bear” by Lexington Kentucky in 2015.
The plot of the movie differs in many ways from the real-life events. Notably, the real life cocaine bear isn’t known to have killed anyone after consuming the drugs. And what really transpired in the time leading up to the death of the bear from overdose is really not known.
The movie was released on February 24, 2023 by universal pictures and the production budget was 30 million U.S dollars to 35 million dollars. Cocaine bear as of March 5, 2023 has a grossed net worth of over 52 million dollars worldwide. The movie can be downloaded or watched on Netflix, YouTube or Hulu. You can also stream it online on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video.
