Typical make a jerk into a victim story

Rating: Null/10 (9 April 2001)

Well, there goes Hollywood again trying to make us all feel sympathy for this character who is a total jerk. Of course, you would never get that impression from the movie. Depp portrays Jung as a poor guy who made a few bad decisions. Come on. I don't buy that for a second. Here is a guy who knowingly broke the law numerous times and introduced cocaine into our society, and yet I was crying at the end of this movie for him.
Then, as I walked out of the theatre, I got mad. He made all of the choices he made. I'm sorry if he realizes now the mistakes that he made, but he should've been clued in, oh, sometime around the first time he was sent to prison. **SPOILER** The biggest rip off to me was the text at the end of the movie stating that his daughter still has not visited him in prison. Good for her. I hope she doesn't, and I hope she doesn't watch this obviously biased movie. And he's scheduled to be released in 2015? If they do release him, they're crazy. He obviously never learned from any of his mistakes. **END SPOILER**
That said, I did enjoy watching this movie, but I probably would have liked it better if it wasn't a true story. Johnny Depp and Paul Rubens both give excellent performances, and I was entertained for 2 hours. I actually liked this movie much better than I liked Traffic. At least it didn't feel like an after school special.
My other nitpicks are (1) they presented way too much information, so there never feels like any depth to any of this. Every few minutes there were '3 years later' or '1 year later' subtitles. (2) The make-up they put on Depp at the end to make him appear older and fatter is terrible. A heartwrenching scene made me laugh because he looked so silly. (3) Penelope Cruz. What's the big deal about her? She looks beautiful in her first scene, but after that she looks terrible. Her character had absolutely no depth.
Anyway, I'd recommend seeing it, but don't feel sorry for this guy. We are seeing his viewpoint of all this, and I can't help but believe that they left out a few choice details.