Pretentious, overrated; couldn't care less about the characters

Rating: 2/10 (13 May 2017)

This is a bleak film about a group of drug addicts in Brooklyn, NY. Nearly everyone is on drugs. They snort it, shoot it, smoke it and swallow it. When they're not taking drugs, they're boinking each other, watching moronic infomercials, getting shot or making grandiose plans for a future that will never exist.
I'm not clear why I'm supposed to care about any of these people. They're boring, narcissistic and self-destructive. They don't share any interesting ideas about art, literature or politics. No one works, except, you guessed it, in the drug trade. I don't care about them, and quite frankly, wish they would all overdose so the movie would end.
The direction is distracting and also quite pretentious. Whenever someone downs drugs, the film jumps to a rapid-fire montage of drugs disappearing, capillaries carrying drugs to the brain and dilating pupils. It's interesting the first time, but by the 37th time, you just wish the director would stop. But he doesn't. He wants you to understand that drugs are bad. They are, but so is this movie.