I'm going to write a couple of those so-called spoilers with the hope that other people be spared the ordeal of seeing this movie.

Rating: 1/10 (6 June 2003)

I dare to say this is the worst movie I've ever seen. And I've seen almost all the movies.

Jesuitism Jes"u*it*ism (?), n. [Cf. F. jésuitisme.]
1. The principles and practices of the Jesuits.
2. Cunning; deceit; deceptive practices to effect a purpose; subtle argument; -- an opprobrious use of the word.

This movie, which qualifies as some kind of paradigm for boredom; could be perfectly described with the second entry for Jesuitism in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary's 1913 edition. It is so biased, that it has flown over the boundaries of plain bigotry and extreme anti-drug-right-wing propaganda. G.K. Chesterton used to say that there are more tints in the human soul (human psychology if you are an atheist) than there are greens and browns in the leaves of a forest. Mr. Aronofosky, of course, would not agree with Chesterton; for him is there's only a colorless, somehow mudded, state of mind, which makes it very easy for people to be taken deep into the bottomless abyss of idiocy and Evil. It doesn't matter how much a person can be loved, it doesn't matter how talented or beautiful one can be; the Devil, (i.e. `The Drug') will get them. The Devil wants your soul and if you try `The Drug' but once, he'll get it. Aronofosky tells the story of four more or less normal and not precisely intelligent people, who in one year are driven to Hell and Damnation because of `The Drug': one of them a very beautiful Jewish girl, who becomes a hooker; her boyfriend, also a Jew, ends up in jail and with one arm cut-off; the boyfriend's mate, a black man, ends up in jail and beaten, called nigger and forced to do forced labor; and the Jewish boy's mother, who also becomes a junkie and at the end of her tether is treated unsuccessfully with electroshock therapy. Why on earth would an Yiddishe-momme become an addict? Simply, just because she takes amphetamine pills to loose weight, that she may wear a red dress in a TV show. Of course, TV is Evil, too. TV is the Devil itself, Mr. Aronofosky. Warns us. In spite of the fact that all the junkies in this film are African-American and Jewish; in spite of the fact that drug dealers are Italian-American and African-American; in spite of the fact that the men who drag Jennifer Connelly's character to prostitution are, again, a Jew and an African-American (she gives herself in exchange of drugs, shrilling, isn't it?). And just when we're starting to ask ourselves: Is this movie a racist movie? The director or the producers realize what we have in mind and try to mend the whole thing providing us, very underhandedly and sneakily, with some redneck cops and doctors in a state 600 miles south of New York. Somebody should have tipped them that placing a bunch of coarse rednecks makes the movie no less a stereotyped racist movie, quite on contrary. This churlish doctor is so mean that refuses to take care of the junkie-Jewish boy's gangrenous arm and gives him up to the no less churlish racist local police. It must be said that the boy gets his arm in such a horrendous shape after shooting the Devil, I mean `The Drug' repeatedly in the same spot, even when the arm is not an arm anymore but a purple piece of rotting meat. The police first try to make him work and noticing he cannot do anything but stink; send him to the hospital to get his arm amputated. The end is one of those all-out endings; Mr. Aronofosky is kind enough to open the gates of his personal look-alike idea of Hell. And he achieves his goal, we're allowed to catch a glimpse of one of the worst infernal circles, the one intended for tediousness and ennui. I've had a nightmarish idea: What if, from time to time, the damned who inhabit down there are mercilessly punished with the projection of this picture?