9 - Excellent

Rating: 9/10 (23 December 2015)

This is the movie that DARE should be showing our kids. The movie follows 4 characters in Brooklyn who end up with life-threatening drug addictions. The protagonist, his girlfriend and his friend get hooked on heroin and resort to selling drugs and even prostitution to keep their habit. The protagonist mother, lonely, in isolation and self-conscious about her weight takes up an amphetamine habit which she justifies with the fact that a doctor gave them to her.
The fast and stylized editing particularly convey the message well. Intense scenes are sped up, and scenes of boredom and fear are slowed down. When you're an addict, a minute without drugs feels like an hour. All in all, it's a rough harrowing movie: one of the saddest I've seen. It really stirred me up and for a while after the movie I still felt the pain of the characters. It's an excellent movie but it's going to be hard emotionally to bring myself to watch it again.