IN a tale that sounds stranger than fiction, a man hardened by a violent upbringing in the East End of Glasgow was hired to kill Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar.
Now the remarkable story of gun-to-hire Peter McAleese is to be told in a dramatic documentary which will receive its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival before being shown on BBC Scotland later in the year.
Told in McAleese’s own words and featuring never-seen-before footage of his Colombian mission, Killing Escobar reveals how McAleese’s early years followed by his training in the SAS and experience as a mercenary in Africa led him to take on this seemingly suicidal assignment.
“Imagine if Rambo came from Riddrie – it just feels like two worlds colliding that you would never expect to meet but then when you hear the story and look further into it, it all makes sense,” said Mick McAvoy of Glasgow based Two Rivers Media who made the film with Salon Pictures.
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“One way you can look at it is to see it as a story of men undertaking a foolhardy adventure that involves the deadliest man in the world at that time but it also looks back on Peter’s life and the link between masculinity, violence, aggression and growing up in poverty.”
Now a 78-year-old grandfather, McAleese was asked to put together a team of mercenaries to travel to the heart of the criminal empire of the world’s most dangerous man to assassinate him. Incredibly, one took a video recorder and camera with him.
“At times you think ‘I can’t believe this is on film’ but he knew he was in the middle of an adventure and wanted to capture it,” McAvoy told the Sunday National.
Viewing it for the first time McAvoy was shocked at the “chaos and madness” of the country.
“The Netflix Narcos series gives you a look into what happened in Colombia but the footage we have shows the chaos that was surrounding, and created by, this absolutely destructive figure” he said. “Pablo Escobar was a man who blew up an entire passenger plane in order to try and kill one person. We hear from somebody that worked with him, who was a key member of that world, and he talks about events in a way that is shocking because it is so matter of fact.”
McAvoy said the film was also a window into the world of mercenaries during the 1980s, many of whom were former soldiers in the British Army.
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“The amazing amateur footage of the planning and the training of the mercenaries in Columbia gave us the ability to tell the story in a really visually exciting way,” he said. “It’s footage you know will just make people’s jaws drop and it will be the kind of programme that everybody will talk about the next day. Without a doubt this is one of the most edge-of-the-seat dramatic films I have been a part of.”
As well as intimate archive from McAleese’s life there are interviews with other key participants in the story, such as drug enforcement officers Javier Pena and Steve Murphy, the subjects of Netflix’s hit series Narcos, and McAleese’s Cali Cartel liaison Jorge Salcedo, whose experiences in Colombia also inspired the Netflix series.
McAvoy said that despite his past, McAleese was now a “fascinating, open, warm and generous” man.
“You can tell he has come a long way in his life and he has got a real sense of perspective on those days. When you meet him you can’t help but come to a sense that this is someone that has discovered within himself that some of those years were spent badly. He has returned to the Catholicism of his youth, given up drink and in the space where he has found time for faith and reflection.”
Extra challenges were thrown up by the pandemic while making the film but McAvoy said it was completed thanks to “ingenuity and skill across the board”.
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“We had a huge crew in Colombia, a crew in America and a crew in Scotland who were all incredibly careful and followed rigid protocols to keep everybody safe,” he said.
The film has been commissioned by BBC Scotland and received major production investment from Abacus Media Rights, who hold international distribution rights, and The National Lottery through Screen Scotland. Directed by award-winning filmmaker David Whitney, it will receive its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival on March 7, and its UK television premiere on the BBC Scotland channel later this year.
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