Benicio Del Toro didn’t set out to portray the late Columbian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar as the Latin Robin Hood in Andrea Di Stefano’s Escobar: Paradise Lost. Still, he understands why audiences embrace that myth. “People are attracted to characters that go against the law since the beginning of film,” Del Toro said during the film’s Wednesday press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival. Escobar: Paradise Lost has Del Toro in the titular role and Josh Hutcherson playing Nick, an American surfer who meets the girl of his dreams, before slowly awakening to the horrors of Columbia’s deadly drug trade when he meets her uncle, Escobar.
