The Grand Illusion

Rating: 9/10 (11 April 2001)

CONTAINS SPOILERS
In an early scene, a young George Jung is at the unemployment office with his father who's just lost his job. Mr. Jung all but promises his son that they'll never be poor. This is a nice thing for a dad to say. The problem is that George feared poverty more than Mr. Jung ever could have imagined. With this scene, writer David McKenna (American History X) introduces his theme and the ride begins.
This telling of George Jung's life is exhilarating, entertaining, fascinating. Yet underneath each scene is the shallow cry of sadness. Imagine yourself in a seat next to Jung himself, or even imagine yourself as Jung watching this film. I suspect that if Jung is given the opportunity to watch the finished film (he got to see a rough cut before its release), he'll be grateful for its existence. If there is any possible good that could come from this man's life, it is the film that is based on it (I can't speak for Bruce Porter's novel but I hear it pushes him as more of a heroic, legendary figure).
`Blow: How a Smalltown Boy Made a Million Dollars with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All' is not an autobiography. `Blow' the motion picture is told from Jung's point of view, though. We see everything, condensed into two hours as movies have to do, as Jung sees it. Demme tells the story like he's Jung telling a classroom full of teenagers why no one should want to live the kind of life he lived. He's saying, Â‘Do not get to the end of your life and wish you'd done things differently'.
In `Blow' I saw a man who fulfilled all of his childhood ambition thousandfold only to discover it wasn't what he wanted at all. His cellmate in Danbury tells him `you didn't fail to achieve your dream, you just had the wrong dream'. He was speaking of switching from marijuana to cocaine, of course, but the statement is true on a much larger scale (SPOILER INCOMING!!!) Near the end, Jung is released from prison and achieves great personal triumph by re-establishing a relationship with his daughter. He wants to clean himself up and take her with him to California. And she wants to go! But all he has ever known is drugs. All he needs is one last big score. The deal is done and he believes he's on his way. But it's a set-up, a DEA sting. He fails his daughter worse than he ever did before. He finally knew exactly what he wanted, but was incapable of getting it.

`Blow' is a carefully crafted film that isn't always perfect, but achieves its objectives. I've heard people complain about the ending of this movie (how is this possible? It's a true story!) I hear things like it's too slow, it's too melodramatic, yada yada. Me, I wasn't completely sold on the film until that last scene. It's nicely caps the sad tale of a man who discovers that his life, just as his daughter is in this scene, was all just an illusion.
Grade: A-