‘The Infiltrator’ At 10: How Brad Furman And Rober Mazur Put Bryan Cranston On Other Side Of The Drug Trade

Three years after his tenure as Breaking Bad’s meth kingpin Walter White came to an end, actor Bryan Cranston explored the other side of the drug trade in The Infiltrator.

“It was really refreshing for him and something he was incredibly comfortable doing,” director Brad Furman, who had previously worked with Cranston on The Lincoln Lawyer, told me over Zoom.

The Infiltrator adapted the non-fiction book of the same name, in which author Robert Mazur details his time as an undercover agent working for the United States Custom Service. In the 1980s, he spearheaded Operation C-Chase and successfully infiltrated Pablo Escobar’s notorious Medellin cartel, particularly its money laundering activities through the now-defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International, by portraying himself as corrupt businessman Robert Musella. The operation, which lasted two years, delivered a serious blow to the drug world with over 100 arrests, 85 indictments, and the decimation of BCCI (the seventh-largest privately held bank in the world up to that point).

“The leadership I had made the difference,” Mazur said over the phone. “They gave me 18 months to put together the front I was using rather than throw me in the deep end of the pool and expect things to work. The success of the operation is a credit to probably more than 150 agents, analysts, managers, prosecutors, and administrative staff throughout the U.S. and several foreign countries that really made the operation go.”

Furman became aware of the book via his old NYU buddy, producer Don Sikorski, whose background in investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking gifted him with a keen eye for captivating stories based on true events. Sikorski also suggested that Furman’s mother, Ellen Brown Furman, a successful Pennsylvania litigator and part-time fiction writer, to pen the screenplay.

“I sort of laughed and said, ‘We’re never getting her the job. That just sounds insane,’” Furman remembered. “But I thought it was a good idea, so we gave her the opportunity to pitch. From what I’ve been told, she was formerly brilliant in a courtroom, but she sort of bombed the pitch—to say the least. The irony and humor of it all was that [producer Miriam Segal] had the foresight and guts to be willing to give my mom a shake."

While Cranston ultimately played the role of Mazur and his phony alter sego, the real-life figure behind the incredible story revealed that Robert Downey Jr. and Ryan Gosling were also considered for the project. Nevertheless, Mazur is more than happy with where the main casting ended up.

“I’m very fortunate that Bryan became the actor to play me,” he said. “First, he’s a total gentleman and a humble guy. We spent a lot of time talking over the phone, but he also spent a lot of time talking on the phone with my wife and two kids. I think he really wanted to try to capture the chemistry of the family, and he did. He came and visited, we spent time together, and I gave him access to all the material I had gotten through Freedom of Information Acts and public records requests. I gave Brad and the whole team a complete dump of video recordings, audio recordings, transcripts, reports. They had everything. So, besides me telling them, they had a real feel of what the case was really all about.”

Added Furman: “If you ask Bob a question, you will get a two-to-three page email. It’s not ever quick. His attention to detail is extreme, which I think also really made him great at his job for the many years that he did it at the highest level. Working with him was a joy, because he gave so much.”

The family element was especially crucial to Furman, who saw it as a way to set The Infiltrator apart from a similar film about an undercover law enforcement officer: Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco.

“I didn’t want to make the same movie or repeat it,” explained the director. “What I felt was extraordinarily different, although they’re both undercover stories, was the fact that Bob Mazur actually tried to still be a father, raise his kids; be at home and be a family man. I don’t mean to be weird, but you sort of don’t sh** where you eat, and that’s what he was doing a bit."

Mazur walked a precarious tightrope between family man and faux felon where one slip-up meant certain death. That razor-thin line between personas is exposed in one of The Infiltrator’s most tense scenes, in which Mazur is recognized by one of Musella’s criminal acquaintances while having an anniversary dinner with his wife (Juliet Aubrey). Thinking quickly on his feet, Mazur passes his spouse off as his secretary and feigns outrage when the waiter brings over a cake bearing anniversary wishes.

The incident didn’t happen in real life, but it was based on a foolhardy decision Mazur made to take his wife and friends to a New York City social club he had previously visited in his capacity as Robert Musella. “I said, ‘If anybody comes up to me and says, “Great to see you,” or anything like that, don’t say anything and I’ll talk my way out of it,’" he recalled. “But after that was over, I realized, ‘Okay, I’m getting a little bit too close to having something like that happen.’”

That was the most difficult part, juggling what Mazur described as “two brains." On the one hand, he couldn’t forget who he really was. On the other hand, he had to fully commit to the disguise. “There were parts of my Mazur brain I had to totally shut down," he stressed. "Anything about family, anything about what I’m missing back at home. I couldn’t let that interfere with my thinking. I hd to have 100% of my mental focus on everything that I was doing in furtherance of Robert Mussella.”

Said Furman: “That, to me, made it really different. Whereas in Donnie Brasco, he completely abandons his family."

Funnily enough, Mazur is good friends with the actual Donnie Brasco, FBI agent Joe Pistone, who trained Mazur for undercover work. “I had him and psychologists who were really were insightful about things one should look for within themselves that would give them red flags that they might be losing touch with their roots,” he explained. “But they also really drilled into your head a nine-step process that I used to enhance rapport and communication with people.”

He had to use all nine while ingratiating himself with one of the operation’s biggest fish: Medellin cocaine smuggler Roberto Alcaino. The movie devotes much of its runtime to the relationship between Musella and Alcaino (played by Benjamin Bratt), exploring how an undercover agent can sometimes become emotionally attached to someone they’re trying to bring down.

“There were some characters I met who, absent their involvement in the crimes they were involved in, were people I could have become friends with in the real world,” Mazur said. “For instance, Roberto Alcaino. Everybody who listened to the tapes said Roberto took me in like the son he never had. He had two daughters, a wife, and three girlfriends—and I knew them all. He completely took me in and endorsed me within the eyes of others within the cartel.”

Despite an invitation from Alcaino to with meet with Escobar and the other cartel bigwigs in person, Mazur was forbidden to accept. “My agency wouldn’t let me go,” he shared. “They claimed that it was too dangerous.”

The operation culminated in a sham wedding in Tampa held for Bob Musella and his fake fiancée (Mazur’s fellow U.S. Customs agent Kathy Ertz; played in the film by Diane Kruger). Furman stages the last few moments before the ersatz nuptials, attended by a who’s who of wanted lawbreakers, as an unbroken tracking shot.

“I felt really confident this was a great way to weave the story together,” the director added. "I don’t even remember how many times we shot that thing. It was hard as hell to pull off. It's a big one. You’ve got a lot of moving pieces.""

The Who’s “Eminence Front," meanwhile, provides the perfect musical accompaniment, helping bring the time period to vivid life and adding a palpable sense of build-up to the big bust.

“When I’m writing and creating, music is always the first point of entry for me,” Furman said of the song choice. “I felt like the rhythm, the pace, the distinction of the musical elements of the track, the opening without any words, and just the way it rolls in…it just worked. I knew it. I heard it and jotted it into the script.”

Mazur was offered a cameo appearance as the priest officiating the wedding, but turned it down for one very good reason.

“There are some defendants and family members of defendants that take what occurred very personally,” he explained. “I’m not looking to get people unnecessarily excited about that. I could’ve had makeup, and you wouldn’t have recognized me, but in the scheme of things, I really think I’m less important. The story is more important, so I kind of felt it would have been a distraction.”

Drug cartels aren’t exactly renowned for their forgiving nature and in the wake of C-Chase, Mazur received numerous threats in the wake of C-Chase and even had a $500,000 bounty put on his head.

“Anybody who did this type of work realizes that they need to be security conscious,” he empahsized. "You’re using your personality to establish rapport and communication with people. At times, you have to come across as a friend and they believe you. And then, in their eyes, you betray them. So, I'll always be security conscious.”

The Infiltrator infiltrated theaters on July 13, 2016 to little fanfare and just over $21 million at the global box office. For comparison Furman’s previous two movies—The Lincoln Lawyer and Runner Runner—made $86 million and $62 million, respectively. The director credits the film’s disappointing run to poor marketing from distributor Broad Green Pictures, which folded two years later.

“They had no idea how to handle this film whatsoever,” noted the filmmaker. “They committed to marketing dollars they didn’t spend. This film would have absolutely annihilated at the box office if it had been properly marketed and distributed.”

He was vindicated when the movie landed in the streaming market, where it did massive numbers on Amazon’s Prime Video service.

“That alone tells you that with the right marketing, the right awareness, the right campaigns, the right theaters, you win in a big way,” Furman added.

Amazon Studios was so impressed, in fact, that it asked him to pitch a sequel based on Mazur’s second book, The Betrayal, which centers around his brazen follow-up to Operation C-Chase. Ironically, Mazur was fully addicted once the new mission kicked into high gear. Not to drugs, but information, which “became my heroine,” he confessed. “If I didn’t get more information, I would perceive myself to be failing in the mission. And so, I continued to take a little bit bigger risks in order to try to get the bigger pieces of information that I could possibly get. By the time I got into the second undercover operation in The Betrayal, I was definitely hooked.”

Furman agreed to adapt the second book, so long as he was allowed to break the mold a little.

“I was vehement that I didn’t want to make the same movie again,” he said. “A) because I felt I had done it and B) because I grew up as a kid on certain sequels—whether it was Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Lethal Weapon or Back to the Future. I felt like they were getting better and I wanted to do something that was better and different and learn from the mistakes I thought we had made on the first one. I pitched a pretty crazy idea and we never really got it there.”

He wanted the sequel to further probe how “the life of an undercover is incredibly challenging from the psychological demand that it puts on an individual. We were really pushing the envelope.”

Despite enthusiasm from both Furman and Cranston, the project fell apart amidst corporate shakeups at Amazon Studios. The Infiltrator subsequently moved to Netflix, where it climbed into the streamer’s Top 10 list.

“With better timing, we probably would have made that movie,” Furman revealed. “Stranger things have happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually made it. The fandom of Infiltrator has caught tremendous steam. I spoke to Bob and Bryan recently, and we’re back talking about doing a sequel again. Maybe we'll thread the needle creatively this time … Having this chat inspired me a little bit. I’ve just got to go sit and write it. My mom and I wrote many drafts, but I'd have to go back and really dive in. If people want to see it, I know Bryan would love to make it, too.”

Mazur would be thrilled if The Betrayal movie comes to fruition, but isn’t “going to worry about trying to make it happen,” he concluded. “That’s for Brad and Bryan and everybody else who has an interest in the sequel. I'll do whatever it is that needs to be done in order to help them. They know I'm standing by. I've got the rights and when they're ready, I'm ready.”