Review: Blow

Blow is a good movie. The minute George Jung (played by Johnny Depp) says in a voice-over that "everything is perfect," you know the roller coaster that is his life is about to start rocketing downhill. From The French Connection to Traffic to this week's example, drug movies are almost always apocalyptic, with dizzying rizes and falls. And the falls are always -- always -- signaled by DEA and FBI blue-helmeted SWAT teams battering down doors and shrieking "go, go, go!," one of the standard cinematic cliches of our time. Hollywood -- where drugs are probably as popular as in any other neighborhood, if you believe the police blotter -- never quite knows what to make of drugs, or how to portray the drug culture. In some ways, this movie is about that mixed message. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, not endings. Add your own review. (Read more.)

Drugs -- especially coke -- have been associated since the 60s with celebrity and glamour. To say the least, this has always sent a confusing message to the kids who are supposed to stop using them.

The Depp character predicts that once musicians start using coke, everybody else will fall in line. He was right. Actors weren't far behind. Moralists and politicians have never quite caught up to this odd American reality, the strangely glamorous cachet given drugs in this culture.

Traffic raised the question of whether our insane and costly drug policies can ever work. But that movie made sure that all its uses and peddlers were either grotesque villains or tragic victims awaiting redemption.

Blow doesn't take itself so seriously as a drug-message movie. It's more an appealing, sometimes powerful portrait of a doomed character of a particular era and environment, in which drug profits rode a tidal wave of middle-class and college-kid money.

Depp's Jung isn't a bad guy, just an oblivious one caught up in the swirl, not really in the same league as the guys he gets tangled with. He's a good-natured, good-hearted loser who rides the wave, then takes the inevitable fall. Like Traffic, this movie takes a bleak view of the government's desperate and ineffective war on drugs.

But Blow isn't really about drugs per se, at least not most of the time. It's about that strange period in American life when drugs became both celebrated and ubiquitous, even as laws and law enforcement attempts to stem the tide became more frantic, ineffective and Draconian.

The movie is based on a more-or-less real life drama (the real-life Jung's ravaged, haunted face pops up at the end, a nice move). A guy from Massachusetts heads for California, can't believe the babes and drug appetites, and ends up yakking with the celebrated Columbian druglord Pablo Escobar and shuttling truckloads of grass and cocaine in and out of the U.S. in suitcases, planes and boats. He has so much cash piled around his boat in boxes that he has to buy a new boat.

The 60s and 70s settings and styles are terrific (the soundtrack is also great, kicking off appropriately with the Rolling Stones and including Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bob Dylan). It's a perfect role for Depp, too, and he handles it easily. Ray Liotta plays Jung's doting but heartbroken father Fred, weak in the face of the money-grubbing shrew he married, who watches helplessly as his only son hits the wall. Their relationship, well portrayed, effectively sets up Jung's own sad fate.

Ultimately, Blow is a morality play about loss and betrayal, lost chances, and the unthinking ways in which people toss their lives away. Its opening shot makes clear that this is a story of reckoning, as mass-marketed movies about drugs probably have to be to get past Hollywood squeamishness and into the suburban megaplexes. (The producers said they couldn't even mention the word "drugs" in the trailers to get a "PG" rating for the preview.)

The message is always more or less the same. If you get caught up with this stuff, you will get burned badly, ultimately losing everything of value in your life, if not your life itself. It seems inevitable that the next phase will be people dealing and selling drugs (like sex) over the Net, if they aren't already.

Blow does veer off-track when Jung meets and marries a spoiled Columbian brat (Penelope Cruz) and fathers a child. Naturally, the arrival of a daughter makes Jung see the light. Is it too late to reform? (What do you think?) The relationship between Depp and Cruz never really has time to develop, though, or even make much sense, though it's critical to the film's despairing and emotional payoff. Somehow, we are not the least bit surprised when Jung's wife turns into -- you got it -- a money-grubbing shrew.

Blow is worth seeing. Despite the fact that it can't always make up its mind precisely what it's about, the movie is more than saved by Depp's heartbreaking performance. He humanizes the drug culture and makes us feel as if any of us, at that time, might easily have gotten pulled into it.

Comments

More ... (spoilers)

[Hrunting]

Like Traffic, this movie takes a bleak view of the government's desperate and ineffective war on drugs.

No it doesn't. It doesn't comment on the government's efforts at all. The only time the government is even portrayed is when Jung himself gets caught and put under the punishment of the law.

Columbian

When you're referring to the country of Colombia, the descriptive is 'Colombian'. I hope you don't anger too many patriotic cartels.

This movie is first and foremost a biography. It's not necessarily a commentary on the drug culture. It's not commentary on government policy. It's a biography of one man's life showing the consequences of certain decisions, not the least of which is total alienation from everything he loved. The characters are very well-portrayed (despite what Katz says, the Cruz/Depp on-screen relationship is perfect, because it accurately mirrors the Jung/Mirta relationship) and the movie moves along at a snappy enough pace that you're not left idling on any one scene.

What I didn't really like about the movie is that it never encouraged any sort of feeling about the protagonist. The movie tries at points to make you feel sorry for Jung or angry at Jung or understanding, but it never really comes through, because when he's a victim, it's really his own fault, and when he's not the taking advantage of various oppurtunities, you just see them as dumb but acceptable decisions. At the end, when I'm supposed to feel somewhat bad for this man who's lost literally everything, I don't, because everything wasn't taken away; he gave it all away. I end up feeling worse for the father than for anyone else, simply because he's the only one who constantly gets the shaft (by no fault of his own).

In all, Blow is a worthwhile movie to see, but it's not a commentary on drugs like Traffic. Depp's not going to win any Oscars for his portrayal of Jung, even though it's a relatively good one, simply because the audience really isn't all that moved. Everyone who walked out of the theatre with me basically said, "Eh, it was a good film, but I wasn't really affected by it."

YMMV.