The gonzo new horror flick Cocaine Bear boasts a number of stars from The Americans, though the two projects couldn’t be any more different in tone. There’s Keri Russell, who stars as the leading mom of the film, Sari. She’s briefly accompanied—though they’re not in any scenes together—by former co-star-turned-real-life partner Matthew Rhys as drug mule Andrew C. Thornton, who falls out of a cocaine-filled plane to his death in the first five minutes of the film.
With Rhys gone, Russell shares more scenes with former Americans co-star Margo Martindale—who, in turn, becomes the best part of the entire movie. My apologies to the bear on cocaine and (small spoiler!) the duo of baby bears, who also snort some dust. In fact, ranger Liz (Martindale) should actually be on the poster of the movie, yelping her lungs out about how the bear just chomped off part of her butt.
(More spoilers ahead for Cocaine Bear.)
Liz is the overseer of the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, who aims to destroy a trio of ditsy park thugs while crushing on animal-rights activist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson). She’s truly an everywoman: Liz spreads on a splotch of red lipstick whenever Peter stops by the ranger’s office, hoping to woo him. She sprays Febreze in the air to mask the scent of cigarettes, as if she were a park animal shooting out pheromones. We’ve likely all done the same around our crushes.
But Liz’s true powers are put on display after Sari enters the picture. The mother busts into the park office right as the ranger attempts to share a private moment with Peter—ever heard of knocking? But Sari says she needs to find her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince). Ranger Liz has no interest in helping. She has a hot date! Who wants to help an anxious mother in need when Jesse Tyler Ferguson is ready for a sweltering nature walk?
Liz obliges, partly because it’s her job, but also because Peter agrees to help first. Not long after they journey into the woods, the cocaine bear rears its powder-dusted head from the bushes. Peter climbs up a tree to avoid the enraged beast, but bears are famously able to climb trees, so good ole’ Cokey (as opposed to Smokey) climbs up right after him. Goodbye, Peter—down goes his bloody, dismembered leg, and Liz’s hope for romance right with it.
Now that the movie’s given Liz a hero origin story, we can get into the wildest parts of the film: Liz fighting the bear. The ranger races through her dominion to shelter at the original park office; there she finds two park hooligans (J. B. Moore and Leo Hanna) hide from drug kingpin Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.), after he nearly kills them in a fight.
They mix up the villain of the park—while the hooligans describe an evil force that smashed their heads into toilets in the bathroom, Liz says she also encountered a beast, who was climbing up trees to find more cocaine. While Liz thinks they’re all talking about the bear, the hooligans believe they’re talking about Daveed. The three think they’re all talking about the same entity, until…
“He took a bite out of my ass!” Liz tells them, leading to some confusion between her and the boys. Wait, is Daveed in the business of…whatever that means?
No, she’s talking about that pesky cocaine bear, of course. This becomes more obvious when the bear comes knocking down the ranger’s door, hungry for more blood (and cocaine) after their first encounter. Liz is ready to fight. She’s ready to get revenge on the bear for killing her man. Gun angled toward the door, bloodied and battered, Liz cocks her weapon to murder that damn bear.
Only, when she pulls the trigger, her body is shaking so hard that she misses and shoots one of the park hooligans in the head. Whoops! With her face covered in blood, and the door now blasted open, Liz stares right into the cocaine bear’s soul. They face down, though the movie cuts away to another scene while that happens and brings us back to Liz later.
Every character in Cocaine Bear feels like they’re meant to be an over-the-top version of an actual human being. But Martindale is the only one who actually pulls that off from top to bottom. She is a jealous prick in one moment, a rage-filled gun-slinging ranger the next. Sometimes she’s a lovestruck woman, hungry for Peter; at other points, she just wants to point a weapon in the faces of some demonic park thugs.
In an interview with Page Six, Martindale opened up about her role in Cocaine Bear: “Honestly, as fat and crazy as I look in it, I enjoyed the way I look in it.” And she should enjoy the way she looks—because she’s a complete legend in this movie.
