The cocaine trade that peaked in the eighties and nineties and the ensuing drug wars have left a profound mark in the culture, reflected in a bona fide film genre which produced films such as Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, Oliver Stone’s Savages, Ted Demmes’ Blow and Denise Villeneuve’s Sicario. Not since the gangster movies inspired by prohibition has organized crime held such sway over Hollywood, it seems, as the Cocaine cowboys and the lawmen that tracked them. Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator is the latest film to delve into the shady world, which is currently also the subject of the Golden Globes nominated Netflix series Narcos. It tells the true story of federal agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston) as he infiltrates the fearsome Medellin cartel’s Miami money laundering operations in the 1980s. Even as he befriends Pablo Escobar’s lieutenant Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt) and plans one of the biggest takedowns of drug smugglers on record, Mazur struggles with the dilemma of deceit at the heart of undercover work. We spoke to Cranston and Bratt about the film.