Blow
Johnny Depp, Pen�lope Cruz, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths, Jordi Molla
In Blow, everything's groovy for drug-dealing
Depp until the high times end. Blow, the movie,
is a lot like cocaine, the drug for which it is
named. This true story about the rise and fall of
George Jung, a leading cocaine dealer in the
1970s, is a rush at first, but once the high wears
off, it's a downer.
Depp, his locks growing longer and blonder with every scene, portrays Jung as a none too bright guy who, upon finishing high school in 1968, knows only that he doesn't want to spend his life as a blue-collar drone. He heads for L.A., where he drifts into dealing, starting with peddling marijuana joints on the beach. Many kilos and a jail sentence later, he hooks up with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and the two men set to work making cocaine America's buzz of choice during the disco era. Jung becomes wildly rich, weds a beautiful wife (Cruz, in what is barely a cameo) and has a daughter. But he discovers that, inevitably, what goes up must come down.
Director Ted Demme (Life) set out to make an ambitious, cautionary epic about the intersection between the drug trade and the American Dream, but Jung proves neither complex nor charismatic enough to warrant such treatment. (R)
Bottom Line: Can't sustain initial high
-- LEAH ROZEN
Posted on April 5, 2001 |
