Very good film, much better than Traffic

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 2001)

Blow is, so far, the best film about drug trafficking I've seen. It has all the ingredients: the kind of unstable, luxurious life the druglords live, the level of involvement of white Americans, the idea of blowing life's candle very fast, the way they destroy themselves while destroying other people and their mad adoration of money ("money isn't real", what a great line!). It's very realistic.
It also deals very well with other aspects of their reality: their troubled family life (I think the character of George's parents is a key), the constant betrayals among them and the fact that they often kill each other mercilessly (the scene where Pablo Escobar executes a traitor is almost Cinema Veritè).
This has nothing to do with pretentious, and absolutely unbelievable things that happen in Traffic, such as the head of DEA looking for his daughter in the ghettos and dealing directly with the bad guys, or the wife of an accused trafficker easily driving into Mexico (where the biggest drug barons of the country are shown in a crappy billiard joint).
Johnny Depp's acting is great, as usual. he's a chamaleon. Too bad that cannot be said about Penelope Cruz.
PS. It's been noticed that most women in this film are bitches (the exemption would be Barbara, George's first girlfriend). You must notice that also most men in this film are s.o.bs. It's the environment, not the gender (or, do you expect women around drug traffickers to be esencially different?).