`COCAINE': MIAMI'S VICE.

Byline: - Bob Strauss

Welcome to Miami Vice: The Real World.

MTV-style cutting and camera tricks make you think directors Billy Corben and Alfred Spellman are trying to out-Michael Mann the original ``Vice'' show for a while. But soon it's clear this is an alternately jazzed-up/talking-too-much-heads documentary about the Miami drug trade of the 1970s and '80s.

Things settle down once all the main players are established, and a wealth of information about an extraordinary organized-crime phenomenon is imparted.

And a lot of it is done by the people who were in the thick of it. Those who are still alive to talk, anyway. And rattle on they do, like recovered addicts with more energy than outlets for it.

Native Floridians Corben and Spellman, who made the controversial ``Raw Deal'' about the questions surrounding a university gang-rape case, talk to the local operators and pilots who struck the earliest import deals with Colombia's Medellin cartel. They show how the burgeoning illicit business fueled a wider economic boom for the fading tourist town (with attendant official corruption). And they go deep into the bloody violence that inevitably took over the trade.

We come out of ``Cocaine Cowboys'' greatly informed about a lot of things. We learn the best ways to stash tons of product, how to waste vaults full of money and what it feels like to know that you can get away with doing anything to anybody. It's a remarkable immersion in a world turned morally inside out. And it doesn't look too unlike the rest of America.

COCAINE COWBOYS - Three stars

(R: violence, drug use, language)

Director: Billy Corben, Alfred Spellman.

Running time: 1 hr. 58 min.

Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Documentary about the South Florida narcotics trade is stylish and informative, if perhaps not the whole story.