How to Make Money Selling Drugs 2012

Nicolas Rapold, New York Times: Mr. Cooke ... doesn't entirely pull off the tricky shift from the creative gambit that threatens to undermine the film's moral authority. Read more

Tom Keogh, Seattle Times: "How to Make Money" is full of useful insights from people who know the drug trade well, including reformed dealers, ex-international smugglers, former cops, pundits, lawyers and government insiders. Read more

John Anderson, Variety: By being both glib and preachy, this highly stylized pic ends up being a tiresome buzzkill. Read more

Mike D'Angelo, AV Club: How to sell audiences a lecture: Disguise it as a mock-infomercial. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: This zippy documentary by Matthew Cooke can't compare to Eugene Jarecki's tragic and masterful The House I Live In (2012). Read more

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: If all of this is meant to be a satirical, tongue-in-cheek way into examining the problem of drugs in America, the conceit doesn't work. Read more

John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter: The entertaining doc is more serious than it seems but has little new to say. Read more

Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times: Vital, cogent and impressive. Read more

Linda Holmes, NPR: An ambitious, creative attempt to talk in a single film about everything from the disparate treatment of black and white dealers to the influence of asset forfeiture on law enforcement strategies to the devastation of Mexico's drug war. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Cooke doesn't aim for impartiality and the movie would have benefitted from a broader range of viewpoints. But his concept is impressively original, and he follows through with undeniable creativity. Read more

Farran Smith Nehme, New York Post: It often works, despite in-your-face graphics that occasionally do the job of resembling cheesy sales pitches a little too well. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Despite its slick packaging and overtly facetious premise, director Matthew Cooke and producer Adrian Grenier's faux-educational documentary "How to Make Money Selling Drugs" packs a wallop. Read more

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle: Highly entertaining and informative look at the war on drugs, offers a tongue-in-cheek manual of how to become a cartel leader. But it's not just a glib exercise & confronts the implications of a drug policy that many would agree is a disaster. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail: Ultimately, the most frightening lesson the film teaches is just how dysfunctionally impervious to defeat the so-called war on drugs is ... Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: The problem with Selling Drugs is it's often just a little too flip, without much time given to the downside of addiction and the millions of lives ruined by drug abuse. Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: A thoughtful, intelligent examination of the US war on drugs. Read more

Ernest Hardy, Village Voice: It's a smart, funny, tough-minded film crammed with data and personal anecdotes ... Read more