Well done story but hard to sympathize with the hero.

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2003)

"Blow" is a film about the life of George Jung, one of the major smugglers of cocaine into this country during the Seventies. Johnny Depp plays the character as a laid back adventurer, having fun with his friends in the drug business. Pee Wee Herman plays his gay friend in Los Angeles who handles the distribution.
The production values and cinematography are good, and the story's interesting, especially since much of it's based on real life, but lingering over the film is the reality that George Jung wasn't the nice guy you're seeing in Johnny Depp.
At one point in the film, Depp's character narrates that he was responsible for 85% of all the cocaine imported into the United States from the mid-70's to early 80's. The thought crossed my mind that this was the guy who almost killed me and who caused tens of thousands of people to ruin their lives. True, everyone did drugs of their own free will, but still, George Jung was a bad man.
We're supposed to feel sorry for his predicament - busted finally after hs friends set him up and sent away for thirty some years. Somehow, the tragedy of his daughter refusing to visit him in prison doesn't match the reality of countless daughters never getting to know their fathers because they overdosed on this guy's coke.
Entertaining because of the fine acting, but a misguided venture and a film that shouldn't have been made.