BLEW ME AWAY!

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2001)

Well, not really, but when the opportunity comes my way to use all caps obnoxiously, I indulge. I saw the "sneak preview" of this movie in the theatre and at the time I remember my friend and I making the obvious jokes like, "This movie blows," tee, hee, hee. For some reason this kind of dull wit seemed appropriate, something George and his Boston chums would find funny. And that really seems to me to be the crux of the biscuit. I mean, c'mon, are we supposed to take ol' Georgie boy seriously? Are we really supposed to feel for him? See him as a victim? Well, yes. He's the party boy who gets busted, an opportunist and a business man, a father and a criminal. Demme, Cassavetes and McKenna do a good job of glamorizing George then stripping him of his glamor. But this never breaks his will. Consequently, we empathize with George. Sure he's a bad guy, but he seems loving to his family, friends and the women in his life. This makes him noble in character, though fallen.
Comments have been made that Goodfellas and Scarface are better films in this genre. This may be true sometimes, but what makes George Jung different from Tony Montana is his refusal to turn savage. Whether this has anything to do with the real George Jung is arguable. But certainly the movie portrays George as a cool headed, driven businessman who never turns to acts of violence. Montana, on the other hand, goes through a transformation, descending into an inescapable paranoid madness.
What we really don't get from Blow is how cocaine ruined so many lives. I don't want to sound like a "say no to drugs" campaign here, but the effects of heavy cocaine use haunt us still. George doesn't seem to feel any guilt about the role he's played bringing cocaine into the lives of so many people. I suppose we could look at his failed marriage and estrangement from his daughter as a model for the consequences of drug involvement, but I don't think it resonates this way.
The film I would compare Blow to is dePalma's, Carlito's Way. Carlito is a similar noble character that can't really escape who he is. I think in a way that's what happens to George in Blow. He "blows it" because he doesn't learn from his experiences and somehow just can't be any different than he is.
An interview filmed in prison (on the DVD) with the real George Jung by Ted Demme is interesting, though at times awkward. One moment in particular shows Demme backpedaling after commenting on how he felt meeting George for the first time. What follows is a bit of a*s-kissing on Demme's part and a moment's realization for George that, yes, he is a criminal and an outsider even though his life story was turned into a major Hollywood film. It is an absurd twist on celebrity status. I mean, would we feel the same way about Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, if Hannibal Lector was a real person holed away in a prison somewhere?