Blow
Directed by Ted Demme
Written by Nick Cassavettes and David McKenna
Based upon the novel Blow: How a Small-Town
Boy Made $100 Million with the
Medillin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All by Bruce Porter
Starring: Johnny Depp, Paul Reubens, Miguel Sandoval,
Franka Potente, Ray Liotta
and
Penelope Cruz.
(now playing at theaters accessible to all -
i.e. - multiplexes)
* * 1/2
(Two and One Half Stars)
I wish I could begin this review in a polite way, praising that which is
due and
accepting that which is favorable in Blow, but I’m going to
enter with a gripe. Ted
Demme, director of such films as The Ref, Life and Beautiful
Girls was quoted as saying:
"The ultimate fantasy for me would be in years to come, in a film class,
the professors
would go, 'Want to see Super-8 mixed with 16 mm? Watch Blow.
Want to see chopped
up voice-over and multiple points of view? Look at Blow. They
did everything in this
movie". Sure they did. These things were also done in dozens of other
films and were
done much better. Admittedly, it never ceases to be entertaining when
a filmmaker
fashions a multimedia show, hoping to harness entertainment through
a mesh of short
attention span techniques and vibrant, druggy visuals. The idea, though
- or at least the
unofficial rule - is that if you plan to do these things, you had better
be a towering
storyteller. If you aren't, all the audience walks out with is the
flashy cuts, the
commentary-track voice over and the funny period clothes. Since Blow
never really
attains the bio-pic vibe its going for - even though it starts with
main character, George
Jung’s (Depp) childhood, moves to his college years, explodes through
the middle-aged
1970's and peters out as he curls up in a geriatric ball and falls
from grace in the 1980's. It
never tells its story in a satisfyingly coherent way, always opting
to repeat a viewpoint
instead of logging a new one, often interested more in a thrill or
a laugh than making a
valid or serious point. I could call it an anti drug movie if I didn't
feel like it were only a
cautionary tale aimed at a select few, namely, those smuggling hundreds
of pounds of
drugs into the country. On the filmmaking side, Blow has a scatterbrained
ideal that
MORE is better and as much MORE as you can pile into two hours makes
you forget that
you're watching what is supposed to be the tale of a man’s life. It's
as if the movie itself is
the drug that keeps you from being bummed out that you're watching
a guy with such
terrible luck. And George Jung - who gets arrested something like five
times throughout
the course of this film, is betrayed by friends and relatives, has
an estranged daughter, is
crippled by relationships, loses millions of dollars and watched this
very film from a
prison cell he’s going to be in until 2015 - has the bucket of broken
mirrors and black
cats upended on his head.
Much like Goodfellas
(I feel dirty simply mentioning this film in conjunction with
Blow, by the way), this life story is real and takes a ton of
liberties, opening with a child
learning a lesson he'll later blow out of proportion to fit his own
selfish needs. Later, like
in Boogie Nights, a fast stardom comes to our protagonist, played
with a mop top wig by
Johnny Depp, who, in Blow, plays early twenties to late forties
almost too well for the
quality of the film. And as in Boogie Nights, a looming sense
of dread comes over his
rise to success - the kind of spoiled ecstasy that can only lead to
a wicked fall on the ass.
Of course, bad luck comes in threes in Blow as Jung finds himself
arrested for carrying
660 lbs. of marijuana, burying his girlfriend (Run Lola Run's Franka
Potente, terrific
here) and being arrested a second time after his own mother turns him
in. (Incidentally,
his mother and father act an awful lot like Karen and Henry Hill from
Goodfellas, as if
after they entered the Witness Protection Program, their son took an
interest in the family
business. At least they don't have him whacked). Somewhere in the mix
Paul Reubens
plays an bisexual ex-marine hair dresser. It's almost as if he's reprising
his role as Spleen
in Mystery Men. Finally, the film finds Jung dealing the title
drug and married to
Penelope Cruz, who gets the Sharon Stone (in Casino) points
for being a good sport and
playing a really thin, one-dimensional, extremely bitchy character
who never evokes a
real person and never feels like she belongs in the world of the film.
The best parts of the
film, in fact, are when Jung is between ladies or, late in the film,
when he's tugging
around a beer gut and a hairstyle that will set back actor Johnny Depp's
sex symbol
credibility for years. Essentially, the best parts of the film all
involve things Johnny Depp
does to make things seem less familiar as we're watching Ted Demme
cruise through a
movie landscape, appropriating images and not even thinking to cite
them in a special
thanks list at the end of the film (see his citations in the Movieline
excerpt below).
The film opens with Jung
traveling from Massachusetts to California, where Johnny
Depp plays the shy guy (one of the best characters he plays); right
away we know that he
alone has the power to give George Jung a heart and soul. Later, as
he turns into a
short-sighted, coke addicted dealer, able to snort "ten grams in ten
minutes", Depp
flashes the crazy eyes he introduced in Cry Baby and perfected
in Fear and Loathing in
Las Vegas. Finally, as he attempts frail aging - one of the
most convincing “young guys
playing twice their age with makeup, piss and vinegar” performances
I've seen in years -
he shows us something new, something we haven’t seen in him before.
Always a great
admirer of his work, my salute goes to his choice in roles. Wish he'd
have picked a better
filmmaker to team with.
A final note: This is it,
right? This is the last film I have to sit through that rips off
half a dozen movies a minute, crams fifty songs into an hour and uses
voice-over
narration to keep the audience from wandering away from the already
heavily diluted
narrative? Films like this, when I was a teenager, would have made
me ecstatic with joy.
I would have been screaming for more and excited to be watching energy
unfold
onscreen. Perhaps in my snobbish, seen-too-many-movies twilight years,
I've lost the
ability to enjoy films like this for their attempt at capturing a here-and-now
human
adrenaline rush. But then I think of all of the teenagers going out
to see this film in the
coming weeks and not realizing how thin the originality is wearing
(right before our eyes,
in fact). And I fret for them. I'm not one to be generous, or even
kind - but I'd be lying if I
didn't wish that teenagers had the opportunity to see films like the
aforementioned
Boogie Nights, Goodfellas and all the other films this
one highly resembles BEFORE
they view the worn copies.
(Ted Demme is quoted in the May 2001 issue of Movieline as having "...studied
Goodfellas to a tee", "Casino for a lot of the same reasons
[as Goodfellas]", "The
Parallax View for the paranoia aspect, Midnight Cowboy
for the loneliness and despair of
the characters", "Badlands...", "...JFK for the editing,
and Apocalypse Now...". Wouldn’t
he feel like just a bit of a sell out in not having contributed anything
of his own. Or so it
would seem. Long list, eh?)
home
2001