weak spined drug saga

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 2001)

Coming as it does so hot on the heels of the brilliant, multi-leveled `Traffic,' `Blow' emerges as a superficial, shallow and second-rate survey of the drug-dealing world. Spanning close to five decades, the film chronicles the true-life account of one George Jung, a hotshot cocaine trafficker from the 1970's who is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence for his crimes.
Very little about this film feels original or authentic, as it travels a dramatic arc that seems totally predictable for films of this genre (`Traffic,' by the way, did NOT follow this path). We start with George's unhappy home life growing up in Massachusetts in the 1960's, then it's onto his introduction to drug selling on the beaches of California, his trips to Colombia for meetings with the famous drug cartel leader, Pablo Escobar, his seemingly endless arrests, imprisonments and releases from prison and finally, of course, his too-late realization that the only thing of any value in his life is his little daughter whose life he is managing to screw up in a royal way.
The early days of his `career' - when he is just a young punk making his connections and getting his feet wet in the `glamorous' world of the burgeoning late-60's drug culture - are dramatized on screen with tedious predictability. Even the youthful looking Johnny Depp may be getting a bit long-in-the-tooth to be portraying a late teen, early twenty-something beach bum. The film picks up a little dramatic energy when George is introduced to Escobar, but this aspect of the film is dropped almost immediately in order to concentrate on the tiresome interpersonal backstabbing between George and a number of his drug-running cronies. I realize that this is supposed to be based on a true story, but it is still a shame when the movie ends up having to downplay and eventually even jettison the one subplot that carries with it at least some dramatic validity. Equally uninteresting is George's relationship with his wife, Mirtha (Penelope Cruz), a stereotypical cocaine-snorting, Latina sexpot, more concerned with her drug supply than with her husband and daughter. The filmmakers even try to draw some heavy-handed parallels between George's family (weak but loving father, emasculating, self-centered mother) and the family he has formed with his own wife and daughter.
The biggest failure of the film comes in its clunky attempts to make George into some kind of admirable, sympathetic figure. Fully the last half hour of the film is spent showing us just what an `innocent victim of circumstance' George turns out to be. Even when he is trying his damnedest to go straight, the vagaries of fate keep conspiring against him to draw him back into the world of crime and prison. We are supposed to feel sorry for him because he can't seem to get his life together well enough to be able to raise the daughter he so obviously loves. Yet, when he is finally given the chance to prove his love to her by supporting her and her mother financially, what does he end up doing but arranging for yet another (and in this case abortive) drug deal. It is one thing to provide us with an emotionally complex, morally ambiguous character. It is quite another to expect us to feel pity for a man whose modus operandi is that of sheer stupidity. All our empathy for the character ends up flying out the window and all we can do basically is to feel that the character got what was coming to him.
As George, Johnny Depp seems to be sleepwalking through the part, although it may not be entirely his fault. Writers Bruce Porter and David McKenna and director Ted Demme never establish that feeling of explosive dramatic intensity so crucial to a film of this nature. In fact, for a film dealing with the dangerous world of drug trafficking, `Blow' seems to just sit there lackadaisically on the screen for most of its duration, devoid of energy, tension and drama. Needless to say, `Blow' ain't no `Traffic.'