Everything Goes To Pot For Johnny Depp

Rating: 8/10 (20 June 2008)

Crime doesn't pay in "The Ref" director Ted Demme's "Blow," a Martin Scorsese-style, biographical crime expose about the real-life rise and demise of Boston-born drug trafficker George Jung. "Donnie Brasco" star Johnny Depp portrays the amoral entrepreneur credited with stringing America out on cocaine as everyday, ordinary, and even honorable. In other words, "Blow" is a far cry from Hollywood's stereotypical depiction of drug dealers as despicable dastards. Moreover, "Blow" treats its convicted protagonist as a saintly casualty of the American Dream, shrewish women, and a self-destructive materialistic society. No matter how harshly the courts judged George Jung, currently serving a 60-year stretch in prison, "Blow" depicts him as a nice guy who finished last in the wrong business. Double-crossing accomplices sell Jung out in this compelling but cautionary yarn. Veteran moviegoers will spot the allusions to Scorsese's "Goodfellas," John Glen's "License to Kill," Brian De Palma's "Scarface," and Franklin J. Schaffner's "Papillon." No sooner is Jung out of jail than he finds himself busted and back behind bars. Even the characters that sell him out think that he is a nice guy. Although crime doesn't pay (a status quo value), "Blow" makes it look like the wrong guy got busted.
Ultimately, nobody can gripe that Demme's compelling but depressing film celebrates illegal drug use and the criminal lifestyle. "Blow" opens and closes with references to George Jung's status as a Federal prisoner. First, we hear him say he is incarcerated. Second, "Blow" gives us a revealing glimpse of the real Jung before fade out. Scenarists Nick "Alpha Dog" Cassavetes and David "American History X" McKenna used Bruce Porter's 1993 Jung biography as the basis for their screenplay. In the first 10 minutes, they argue persuasively that a poverty-stricken environment and a castrating mother shaped George's ideology. George's hard-working, blue-collar dad, Fred Jung (Ray Liotta of "Goodfellas") suffers several business setbacks. His status-seeking mom, Ermine (Rachel Griffiths of "Murial's Wedding"), harps about how she married to rise above her lowly origins. Nevertheless, Fred's business debacles repeatedly land him in the poor house. Ermine leaves him only to return to his open, loving arms. George doesn't forgive her. After he watches his father declare bankruptcy, George vows never to be broke. He ignores his father's advice: "Money isn't real. It doesn't matter. It only seems like it does." George pulls up stakes with childhood pal Tuna (Ethan Suplee of "Chasing Amy") and they head out for sunny California. George befriends Barbara (Franka Potente of "Run, Lola, Run"), an airline stewardess, and her flamboyant, drug-peddling gay hairdresser Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens of "Pee-Wee's Playhouse"). Instead of laboring at a nine-to-five job like his father, George lives on the beach and sells pot. Derek supplies the weed, and George sells it to bathers and bikers. Eventually, George starts flying in hundreds of pounds of reefer. Predictably, he gets busted when he grows too ambitious. When Barbara spring her terminal cancer revelation a la "Love Story" & "Terms of Endearment" on him, Jung jumps bail, skips the country, and lives with her in Mexico until she dies. When George sneaks back to visit mom and dad, Ermine calls the cops and George winds up in prison. Our counterculture cowboy shares a cell with Colombian car thief Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla of "Dead for a Dollar"). While George is still on parole, Diego introduces him to powerful South American drug lord Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis of "Fracture"), and George finds himself the point man for the Medellin Cartel in America. "If you used cocaine in the 1970s or the early 1980s, there's an eighty-point per cent chance I imported it. We invented the marketplace." George proclaims in Johnny Depp's deadpan voice-over narration.
About an hour or so into "Blow" things begin to slow. Demme turns George's rise as a marihuana dealer & smuggler into an anthology of idyllic scenes that culminate with Barbara and George buying a luxurious house in Acapulco. Suddenly, disaster strikes. "Blow" becomes a series of Murphy's Law scenes. George's partners betray him. His hysterical Colombian wife snorts more coke than Michelle Pfeiffer did in "Scarface." George tries to quit smuggling, but the authorities raid his birthday party and find his wife's cocaine. Back to prison for George. When Johnny Depp walks into the shot, the camera frames his paunch. He has aged and later ages even more than Steve McQueen did in "Papillon." "Blow's" principal characters live like gods, until they cannibalize themselves on their own greed. Unlike "Traffic" with its ambitious, across-the-board tales about the futile war on drugs, "Blow" confines itself to the dire consequences of cocaine on one man, his family, and his dreams. The last scenes are hopelessly saccharine. Undoubtedly, "Life" & "Beautiful Girls" director Ted Demme and his scribes have whitewashed George Jung to make him look more appealing and messianic. You cannot help but feel sorry for charismatic Johnny Depp he saunters through this above-average opus and gets screwed royally but one and all.