Pakistan, Feb. 16 -- It is tempting to think we've seen it all when it comes to gangster movies - the Tommy-gunning tough guys, the cosa nostra capos and cutthroats, the tattooed yakuza hard men, the cartel-to-Chinese-triad thug lifers, the coked-out kingpins with their Everest-sized blow piles and ballistic "little friends."

Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra's stunning, sumptuous Birds of Passage isn't out to reinvent the wheel regarding drug-lord narratives, nor is it asking Tony Montana to hold its beer. But what it brings to the party by setting its near-folkloric narco tale within the insular indigenous Wayuu community deep in the hills of North Colombia is more than just genre exotica. Part anthropological study, part rise-and-fall ...