"Blow" is Addictive

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 2001)

Unlike other films in the `crime melodrama' genre, Ted Demme's `Blow' delivers the middle man's story, the underdog's, and we watch with driving-by-an-accident shock at how low the lowest can go.

The Plot: Like the rise and fall stories of the main characters in `Boogie Nights' and `Goodfellas' (two films `Blow' borrows from), `Blow' focuses on the man who once controlled 85% of the U.S. cocaine trade: George Jung. Johnny Depp plays Jung as a man who thinks he's at the top, but fails to see the rug of riches and drugs slowly being pulled out from under him. We witness his small town roots, rasied by a middle class patriarch (Ray Liotta) and a materialistic mother. Jung moves to California, where he meets local pot dealer Derek (Paul Ruebens in an extended cameo) and Barbie (Franka Potente).
When Barbie dies of natural causes, and Jung is imprisoned for smuggling 600 pounds of dope into the U.S., Jung's life takes a turn for the worst, which money hungry Jung sees as the best financial investment ever: joining cellmate Pablo and the vicious head of a Collumbian drug cartel in the drug trade. Jung's bio wildly careens from joy to dispair, as his past catches up with him, new wife Mirtha (Penelope Cruz) rats him out,and his daughter is left wondering what to make of her promise breaking, drug dealing father.
The Good: The story is a downer, but that's where it succeeds. Not for an instance does Demme cheat the audience into expecting a happy ending, even in the cleverly deceving prision visit between Jung and his daughter. Demme also keep's `Blow's' pulse racing for the first hour, but the last half flatlines. He may successfully borrow from P.T. Anderson and Scorsese's styles, but he has yet to master their abilities to fully sustain a narrative.
Depp layers the role with emotional complexity, making a memorable part out of the not-so-memorable man the film is based on. The soundtrack is great, but it accompanies rather than accencuates the action. `Blow's' best sequence is between Jung and cellmate Pablo, and is set to dreamy like fades and lighting as they set their plan to distribute the coke. Ironically, it's their wayward dream that catches them in a criminal nightmare. Scenes like these, which have a `full circle' theme to them, are what add poignance to `Blow,' separating it from other mediocre fair.

The Bad: Cruz is nothing more than annoying eye candy. More screentime should be given to Liotta, the film's emotional anchor. The ending is depressing, but anything else would be a copout.
The final image of real-life Jung's mug shot, fading into the ending credits, perfectly concludes the story of one man's redemption via the only way he knows how: breaking the law. His means to do so may not have been successful, but the film about them is.