Depends on what you've already seen...

Rating: 9/10 (11 June 2001)

Comparisons to Goodfellas etc. must be made, and the first hour of this new film from Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls) is the standard rise-and-rise montage that definitely gets boring before anything new happens. I was beginning to get disappointed by the movie up until about half way through, when I realised it was slightly different. Though Blow is no classic, it does deal a little differently with its subject matter (drugs, for those who don't know).
The movie tracks the rise and plummet of a bigshot drugdealer - but is most effective in showing the way he affects the lives of those around him, particularly his daughter Kristina. The best scene in the film occurs between George (Johnny Depp) and Kristina, when she 'visits' him in jail at the end of the movie (this never happened, and is presented here as a kind of delirious hallucination, George finally left alone in a hell he's created).
Aside from the emotion, there is little new in this latest drug epic. Ray Liotta plays a slightly different dad, one who clearly doesn't like his son being a drugdealer but who has no power to stop him, and also Rachel Griffiths plays a different mother, at least, slightly different (I found her calling in the police on George to be a somehow different scene for this kind of movie).
Johnny Depp, on the other hand, plays a kind of compilation of his other characters. Raoul Duke of Fear and Loathing is obviously in there, bigtime (particularly the voiceover and a great "drug dance" he does across a runway at the start of the movie, repeated at the end); as is even Edward Scissorhands to an extent (the youthful George arriving in L.A. for the first time, peeking slightly nervous through his mop hair at pretty ladies); and Donnie Brasco (Joe Pistone), too, and if we're being exhaustive, there's even a throw-away reference to crossdressing (Ed Wood); but he is Johnny Depp, afterall, so we forgive him.
Part of me wants to be cynical about this movie - it is so like what we've seen before (Goodfellas, Scarface, the last third of Boogie Nights...) but, as I've said before, I'm a sucker for emotion and this movie has plenty to throw around. "I thought you couldn't live without your heart," a young Kristina tells her father when he is arrested once more... before he's released, to promise her a trip to California, "I swear on my life..." which is pretty much what he gets; "None of that mattered," George murmurs in voiceover, referring to being betrayed by all his friends, "but I broke a promise..." over a shot of his daughter, bags packed ready for California. The scene between George and Kristina is a wonderful touch ("Daddy's a f**k up..."), not only because of its emotion but in its contrast with what follows... a reminder that crime doesn't pay, there are no emotional reunions, the breaks are permanent, and though it has its glorious peaks, it always ends with nothing.
Hence, my verdict is as follows: if you've 'seen it all', you could do worse than going to see this too - it does have some new stuff in there, new touches to the story, and Depp is great; on the other hand, if you're looking for the classic, rent Goodfellas for goodness' sake; if you're looking for a new spin on the rise-and-fall plotline, go and rent Boogie Nights, and as a bonus you'll find that the last third of the movie hooks up with a drug story too; if you want a new spin on the drug side of things, go and see Traffic; or, if you just think Johnny Depp is brilliant in anything and get excited by his very name, and perhaps just want a little cry in the bargain too, go and see Blow, it just might blow you away.
*Additional* : Over the weekend I read the tie-in book "Blow by Blow" by Ted Demme and Johnny Depp which features digital photos taken on the set by Demme, and mini-essays by George Jung. If you're in any doubt having seen the movie as to how much we should feel for the guy, this book does clarify things more. Yes, the guy is a criminal, but the knowledge of *life* which he has makes his story worth telling. I'd recommend this book almost more than the movie.