Drug Wars: The Camarena Story

TV Mini Series
1990
PG-13
4h 30m

IMDb RATING

6.5/10

684

YOUR RATING

Steven Bauer, Treat Williams, and Craig T. Nelson in Drug Wars: The Camarena Story (1990)

Play trailer1:33

2 Videos

99+ Photos

Crime Drama

An undercover DEA stationed in Mexico exposed large-scale marijuana trafficking, which led to his own murder and a high-profile investigation into government corruption.An undercover DEA stationed in Mexico exposed large-scale marijuana trafficking, which led to his own murder and a high-profile investigation into government corruption.An undercover DEA stationed in Mexico exposed large-scale marijuana trafficking, which led to his own murder and a high-profile investigation into government corruption.

Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.5/10

684

YOUR RATING

Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Won 1 Primetime Emmy
- 1 win & 2 nominations total

Episodes3

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TopTop-rated 1 Season 1990

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Ten years after appearing in this mini-series, Steven Bauer, Benicio Del Toro, Miguel Ferrer, Eddie Velez, and Tomas Milian reunited in the similar themed movie Traffic (2000).

Alternate versions
The show originally aired as three episodes, running a total of 257 minutes sans commercial. For its VHS release, it was edited down to a single 130-minute feature. Thie edit was not endorsed by executive producer Michael Mann, and is notoriously bad, omitting whole characters and connective events, and leaving a threadbare story void of any narrative substance. In 2003, when Lions Gate released the show on DVD in North America, the 130-minute version was used, and it is now the most widely available version. The original 257-minute version divided up into its original three episodes, however, is available on DVD (albeit hard to find); it was released in Scandanavia by a now-defunct Finnish company called Atlantic Film.

Connections
Featured in The 42nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (1990)

User reviews8

Review

Featured review

10/10

Original TV Series Is Brilliant.!! The DVD Version Sucks!!

This movie is brilliant- at least the way I saw it. NBC aired this movie on TV. It was 6hours and it ran over the course of 3 days. At the end of each part NBC reporter Tom Brokaw did a behind the scenes special talking to reporter Elaine Shannon who covered the story to the actual DEA agents portrayed in the movie to even showing Rafa Caro-Quintero's luxury prison cell.

I am so glad I taped it when it aired. The DVD is awful; so many and I mean many, many scenes, vital scenes are taken out. If I watched the DVD without watching the original TV movie I would have had so many questions. One would think the DVD would have all the extras and bonus features.