Review for Blow

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2006)

Blow is a truly terrific movie. Depp shows his versatile acting skills and plays the role of George Jung brilliantly. If you like films such as Goodfellas and Scarface, you'll love Blow.
The movie is about a small time American teen who moves to California for a more interesting life. He gets involved in the drugs trade, and before long is the biggest distributor of 'pot' in California. To cut a long story short- he becomes involved in the cocaine trade, becomes the most important smuggler of cocaine into America in the 1970's and is second only to Pablo Escobar- who he works for.
He ends up getting married, having a child and then gets betrayed by his friends and fellow smugglers in the Medellin Cartel. He leaves the business, a millionaire, and starts what he thinks will be a happy life. The police arrest him and most of his smuggler friends and accomplices when he has a birthday bash, and he loses everything. His wife leaves him and takes his child and he goes to prison for a few years.
When he gets released he re-starts his relationship with his daughter. But he ends up being arrested again for being involved in another drug operation. He then gets put in prison for 60 years- a pretty long time.
The film ends telling us that his daughter has never visited him( but has since the film was released) and a picture of the real George Jung fades into the credits.
Blow is a brilliant film, which somehow, gets you to like and feel for someone who was the biggest distributor of cocaine in America- a pretty good achievement by Ted Demme the director (who died of a cocaine related hard attack!). The film is full of brilliant performances from great actors, has an excellent storyline and is, in my opinion, Johnny Depp's best film. yes, better even than Pirates of the Caribbean!