Blow: Movie Review, DVD Review (2001)

(Originally published 2001)

Directed by Ted Demme, written by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes, based on the book by Bruce Porter, 119 minutes, rated R.

After Stephen Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” Ted Demme’s “Blow” comes off like a flamboyant cartoon, another film about the deglamorization of glamorous people living it up in the glamorous world of drugs.

Based on real-life drug smuggler George Jung (Johnny Depp), a boring dope from Massachusetts who ruled the cocaine market in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s (he’s now serving time in prison), “Blow” is ultimately more about charisma than it is about truth, more about Depp’s smooth strut and tousled hair than it is about George Jung’s fatal flaws--his stupidity, desperation, ego and small-town greed.

The film’s screenwriters, David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes, know enough to be tantalized by Jung’s flaws, but since Demme (“Beautiful Girls”), nephew of director Jonathan Demme, is still in search of a personal style, his film ultimately becomes less about its characters and more about mimicry--specifically, the mimicry of Martin Scorcese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino.”

But the problem with “Blow” goes deeper than mimicry; what truly kills it is its sluggish pace, its struggle for an epic tone and Demme’s inability to make us take any of the action and the characters seriously.

His film is supposed to be about the ramifications of peddling illegal substances and the ugliness of substance abuse, but since it’s completely lacking in substance itself, it never makes a connection with the audience. Indeed, it’s more content to just blow along in a neverending stream of drug movie cliches.

With Penelope Cruz doing her best Sharon Stone as Jung’s gorgeous shrew of a wife, Mirtha; Jordi Molla perfectly sleazy as Jung’s duplicitous Colombian partner, Diego; Paul Reubens fine as a gay drug-dealing stylist; and Ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths entirely unconvincing in their roles as Jung’s parents, “Blow” is all broad strokes and gloss, a film that asks us to feel sympathy for a man who made hundreds of millions off the destruction of others and the poisoning of inner cities.

For audiences to make that leap, it was Demme’s job to paint George as a victim of something--his upbringing, the world, his cocky ignorance. But Demme doesn’t. Indeed, by the end of the film, Jung remains a curious enigma, a man who may have left his mark on the world, but who leaves no lasting impression here.

Grade: D+




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