Cocaine Bear (2023) * *

Directed by:  Elizabeth Banks

Starring:  Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, Matthew Rhys, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brooklynn Prince, Christian Convery

The title tells it all:  A bear in a national forest circa 1985 stumbles across a load of cocaine dropped from an airplane by a smuggler.   She (we find out she is indeed a she) snorts it and turns into an aggressive, homicidal animal who terrorizes anyone in her path.  The idea of a coked-up bear attacking innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders wears thin quickly.   Worse yet, the bear manages to locate more kilos of coke strewn around the forest just when the plot requires her to load up again and maim or kill more people.

Those looking for the cocaine are two dealer friends (Jackson Jr. and Ehrenreich) at the behest of bigger-time dealer Sydney White (Liotta-in his final film role) who needs to recover the cocaine to ensure he won't be whacked by the cartel, and an FBI agent (Whitlock Jr.) who has been chasing White for years.   There are also two teens playing hooky (Prince and Convery) who find some cocaine and propose doing some together.   They do, but not in the way you'd expect.   The girl's mother (Russell) discovers where they went and goes in search of them.   Then there's a park ranger (Martindale), who is way out her depth trying to deal with this bear.   (Who wouldn't be?)

Based allegedly on a true story, Cocaine Bear give the bear more personality than any of the human characters and arouses more sympathy for the animal.   We surely don't want to root against the bear because it's behaving like a bear times 100.  I'm reminded of the Chris Rock joke about Siegfried and Roy's run-in which one of their show tigers:  "The tiger didn't go crazy, it went tiger!"  Cocaine Bear is a 95-minute version of that joke, which should provide us with a respite from movies these days whose average length comes in at about two hours, but when the ninety-five minutes feels like over two hours, then what is the difference?