An intriguing character sidelined - for love story

BENECIO del Toro is rarely a leading man in films, but can always be counted on to be a scene-stealer.

He does that once again, playing the larger-than-life drug lord Pablo Escobar in writer-director Andrea Di Stefano's Paradise Lost.

Loosely based on actual events around the exploits of the Colombian cocaine baron, the film would have worked better solely as a biopic about him rather than have it watered down to the love story between the movie's two other main characters, young Canadian surfer Nick (Josh Hutcherson) and Escobar's niece, Maria (Claudia Traisac).