Review of
Blow
Reviewed by Bill Gienapp
Director: Ted Demme
Starring: Johnny Depp,Penelope Cruz,Franka Potente,Rachel Griffiths,Paul Reubens,Ray Liotta
Blow is the deeply-inspiring, true-life tale of George Jung (Johnny Depp),
that great humanitarian and extraordinary American patriot who was the first to
realize that tapping the Colombian cartels as a source for importing drugs could
result in some serious financial gain. At one point, Jung brags, roughly 85% of
the country's cocaine was being funneled through him – I'm sure the Nobel
Peace Prize Committee will be knocking on his cell door any day now. After all,
if it wasn't for industrious men like him, we wouldn't be getting brilliant
films such as Traffic, now would we?
Blow repackages Jung's life as one of those glittery "rise and
fall" epics that Hollywood never seems to get tired of, in which a
character rides the pleasure-wave of drugs and decadence all the way to the
American dream, just to have everything come crashing down in spectacular
fashion. When we first meet Jung, he's a carefree Manhattan Beach slacker
feeding the apparently voracious appetite of New England college students for
marijuana. After a brief stint in prison leads to his graduation with a
"doctorate in cocaine," Jung hooks up with Pablo Escobar and uses the
Medellin cartel to build a hundred million dollar drug empire. Director Ted
Demme (who helmed the underrated Denis Leary comedy The Ref) stages this
grand affair like a sun-drenched, polyester Goodfellas, yet he can never
seem to figure out why we should care about any of this. Because honestly, when
you get right down to it, Jung comes off as little more than a pathetic bum with
bad pants and even worse hair – a glorified clerk of the drug trade whose
actual insights into the world of cocaine are about as profound as the
platitudes of a fortune cookie.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't note that amidst Blow's moral
bankruptcy and none-too-original depictions of excess is yet another brilliant
performance from Johnny Depp. The guy must have traces of chameleon DNA in his
bloodstream because I swear he completely disappears into every character he
plays. Faring less well is Penelope Cruz, who's as hot as they come but reduced
here to little more than a coke-snorting mannequin as Jung's high-maintenance
wife. The real revelation, however, is Paul Reubens – ol' Pee Wee himself –
who resurrects his defunct career to a certain degree with a surprisingly
effective turn as Jung's gay hairdresser/middleman (imagine predicting that
three years ago). Ultimately, Blow operates on an appropriately epic
scale, but like the much more impeccably-made Casino, its characters are
far too contemptible to be considered tragic. Demme would have been much better
off trying to copy the hyper-violent fervor of Brian De Palma's far superior
crime-epic Scarface. Of course it's almost impossible to take any aspect
of that pulpy classic seriously, but there's no denying that the sight of a
cocaine-saturated Al Pacino unleashing double-barreled fury and screaming
"SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND" delivers a far bigger jolt than
anything you're likely to find in the tepid world of Blow.
