Blow (2001)
Directed by Ted Demme
The story of how George Jung, together with the Medellín Cartel led by Pablo Escobar, established the billion-dollar cocaine empire in the United States in the 1970s.
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Featuring Johnny Depp in the lead role and a solid supporting cast including Ray Liotta, Jordi Malla and Paul Reubens, the film is likely to remind some viewers of "Goodfellas," director Martin Scorsese's film about real-life mobster Henry Hill.
"Blow" is not a very imaginative movie, especially since it's basically a knockoff from Martin Scorsese's far superior "GoodFellas" of 1990.
Where P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" felt like the "Goodfellas" of porn and Scorsese's own "Casino" handled the gambling industry, "Blow" is caught between imitation of its predecessors and finding a style of its own.
Also, director Demme's use of Jung's relentless narration, punctuated with rock songs of the times, seems patterned too closely to "GoodFellas."
Playing like a peppy minor-league version of GoodFellas or John Boorman's great underworld biopic, The General, the movie touts a statistic that commands even more attention than Depp: If you were an American using cocaine in the late '70s or early '80s, there's an 85% chance that Jung was at least peripherally involved in the transaction.
Borrowing the narrative structure and the contagious kinetic energy of Scorsese's "Goodfellas," Demme creates a dizzyingly seductive criminal whirlpool of money and drugs that sucks the audience in right along with Jung, who is played with cool but insatiable zeal by Johnny Depp in another of his engrossingly chameleonic performance.
To be fair, comparisons between this film and any other cinematic "epic" look at period decadence - such as "Goodfellas," "Scarface" or "Boogie Nights" - are inevitable since most all of them employ similar cinematic and storytelling techniques.
Hell, by now every rapper has his or her mandatory copy of Brian De Palma's "Scarface" on DVD.
You walk away from "Blow" feeling that the crime film-as-cultural autopsy has been done to death-"Scarface," "Goodfellas" and "Boogie Nights," to name just a few movies to which "Blow" is in debt.
The first two-thirds of the film fuse together the high-impact operatics of director Brian DePalma's "Scarface" and the in-your-face style of "GoodFellas"; the connection to the Martin Scorsese classic is underscored by the casting of Ray Liotta as Jung's worn-down father.
To be fair, comparisons between this film and any other cinematic "epic" look at period decadence - such as "Goodfellas," "Scarface" or "Boogie Nights" - are inevitable since most all of them employ similar cinematic and storytelling techniques.
Ethan Suplee is endearing as the overlarge Tuna, reminding me of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in "Boogie Nights," and is missed when he disappears from the story all too soon.
Demme makes the drug business accessable to the viewer; the mistake that Boogie Nights (a similar film in tone and setting) made was making its focus distant and obscure.
Where P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" felt like the "Goodfellas" of porn and Scorsese's own "Casino" handled the gambling industry, "Blow" is caught between imitation of its predecessors and finding a style of its own.
Much of the film is reminiscent in style and execution to 1997's brilliant "Boogie Nights" and 1998's misguided "54," both of which involved drugs but did not have them as the centerpiece of the action.
Wait a minute here -- we're encouraged to bask in this one moron's success story in much the same way Paul Thomas Anderson strained to get us to love Marky Mark in Boogie Nights, through a series of plot mechanizations that are as thin as they are obvious.
Much of the film is reminiscent in style and execution to 1997's brilliant "Boogie Nights" and 1998's misguided "54," both of which involved drugs but did not have them as the centerpiece of the action.
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Soon he's flying to Mexico in a 'borrowed' plane piloted by buddy Dulli (Max Perlich, "Beautiful Girls") and has created a small family living high off the hog.
"Blow" was directed by Ted Demme, whose uneven career includes the underrated "Beautiful Girls," one of the best-acted movies of recent years.
This is a question not easily answered in "Blow," a film by Ted Demme (1996's "Beautiful Girls") that is based on the true story of the rise and fall of George Jung, who was the largest provider of cocaine in the United States during the 1970s and '80s.
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.”
The problem with "Blow" is director Ted Demme ("Beautiful Girls," the underrated "Life"), who's certainly not on the same page as Depp, and scriptwriters Nick Cassavetes and David McKenna, who have rendered out of Bruce Porter's book a screenplay of accomplished idiocy.
His "Beautiful Girls" is quite insightful and uplifting (especially in the gutsy way it allows Timothy Hutton to have a crush on a 13 year old Nathalie Portman without making it cheap or creepy), but none of Demme's previous work could prepare you for the rpic scope of "Blow".
For a gritty film about the drug trade to succeed in this post- "Traffic" world, it will need what "Traffic" lacked: heart and humanity.
It's "Traffic" via "The People vs. Larry Flynt."
"Blow" had the bad luck to arrive soon after Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," which gave such a vital, original look at similar material that it makes the ordinary "Blow" pale by comparison.
April 7, 2001 -- The problem of drugs in the U.S. has been tackled in three ambitious, well-acted movies in recent months, "Requiem for a Dream," "Traffic," and now, "Blow."
"Blow" is the third motion picture about drugs in the last seven months (with the other two being the superior "Requiem for a Dream" and "Traffic"), but manages to differentiate itself enough to not feel routine or tedious.
Working from a script by screenwriters Nick Cassavetes ("Unhook the Stars," director of "She's So Lovely") and David McKenna ("Get Carter," "American History X") -- who've adapted Bruce Porter's novel of the same name - Demme weaves an engaging tale of Jung's life from his early pot dealing days in California through the many riches and trials and tribulations of the coke business.
Director Ted Demme ("The Ref") attempts an epic in the style of Martin Scorsese's "Casino" but doesn't succeed.
Where P.T. Anderson's "Boogie Nights" felt like the "Goodfellas" of porn and Scorsese's own "Casino" handled the gambling industry, "Blow" is caught between imitation of its predecessors and finding a style of its own.
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.”
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But it's extremely self-conscious about making its big statements, and consequently it has a labored feeling that's absent from Steven Soderbergh's other fine pictures ( "Out of Sight," say, or "The Limey" ).
A close second is Paul Reubens (1999's "Mystery Men"), stunningly deft in a rare dramatic turn as Derek.