more Style than Substance

Rating: 2/10 (14 January 2009)

I tend to bash the films I think very little of, that nonetheless have a huge popularity. This is one of them.
It's freaking #66 of IMDb's all-time as of this writing, but c'mon, what a meaningless, storyless piece of pap. The problem is, its style has less to do with drug abuse and more to do with an indulgent director's unique camera work. Sweeeeet. Cooooool. Like, Whoooooooooa. But have you ever actually heard that speed makes you hallucinate? No, because it doesn't. But it happens in this film, because, like, that's like, so wow.
The film was powerful, but was also completely soulless bunko. I never read the book, but I suspect half the point was contrasting the legal prescription drug addicts to the illegal substance street addicts. But this was not explored at all.
This film only showed finesse at showing human degradation. Frankly, that's the easy part. And this director definitely looked down his nose on his subjects. Using neato-keen camera techniques turns many filmgoers into fans, but if you notice the directorial style more than the story, the director is not doing his job, and in fact - in my biased opinion- sucks. This is one of those films.