Bryan Cranston is winning America's hearts and minds one drug at a time—first as a self-made meth kingpin in Breaking Bad, now as a U.S. Customs agent going after a Colombian cocaine cartel this sturdy crime drama, based on Robert Mazur’s Miami Vice-era memoir. Cranston plays Mazur, a veteran undercover agent who poses as a Mafia-connected accountant named Bob Musella to launder money for—and thus learn the inner workings of—Pablo Escobar’s coke empire. Focused and careful, Mazur encounters colorful, unpredictable people on both sides of the law—his partner (John Leguizamo) is a wild card; one of Escobar’s men (Yul Vazquez) is a lecherous Mexican dandy—and it’s satisfying (and suspenseful) to see him roll with it , improvising like a regular Walter White to maintain his cover. The story requires a lot of characters, with a main supporting cast that includes Benjamin Bratt, Amy Ryan, Diane Kruger and Juliet Aubrey, and it almost can't help getting bogged down in the details. But director Brad Furman (The Lincoln Lawyer) is smart to focus on Cranston as Mazur, whose skill and decency keep us invested. By Eric D. Snider