The Legend of Cocaine Island begins and ends with one of the film’s eccentric characters staring into the camera, asking a version of this fantastical question: “If you knew where $2 million was buried in the ground, would you go get it?”
The movie’s protagonist Rodney Hyden, a Florida general contractor, pondered this and eventually says yes. A stranger than fiction odyssey of an everyday guy who goes for the gold but ends up in the crosshairs of the law, The Legend of Cocaine Island fits nicely into the genre of documentary that not only re-enacts events but uses many of the actual participants to do the telling.
Theo Love directs the story of the crazy adventure of Hyden who, after finding himself financially reeling from the 2008 recession, decides to search for the 70 pounds of cocaine that a neighbor has repeatedly boasted of burying in the Puerto Rican island of Culebra in the late 1980s.
Hyden’s hunt for the buried treasure–the story of which had become a legend among the residents of remote Archer, Fla.–was spurred on after the self-proclaimed drug dealer Danny/Dee (who dons a skeletal bandana on camera) promises he can sell the drugs if Hyden can retrieve them. Hyden recruits another local, Andy Culpepper, who also appears as himself in the movie, to be his partner in crime.
Hyden and Culpepper go to Puerto Rico to dig up the cocaine but neglect little details, such as bringing a shovel. After a couple failed attempts, Hyden turns to the “pros” (a smuggler Dee hooks him up with) to do the job. And that’s when Hyden’s troubles begin.
The pace of the film picks up in the last third of the movie, which tells of the aftermath of Hyden’s harebrained scheme. Hyden’s entanglement with law enforcement poses some interesting questions about his culpability and how the U.S. government’s war on drugs actually plays out.
By using the real players in this tale, Love, who previously directed Little Hope Was Arson, positions his cast alternately as complicit, ignorant, greedy, desperate, and mercurial. Viewers will no doubt take sides and decide whether the director was serving up the main characters as victims or perpetrators (or a little of both). There’s comedy to be sure, but whether you’re laughing at or with Hyden and company makes this one film worth unearthing from the uneven treasure trove of content called Netflix.
87 min. Rated TV-MA. The Legend of Cocaine Island is available to stream on Netflix.
