Overglamorized after-school special.

Rating: 3/10 (8 January 2008)

It's a powerful, technically brilliant film, but to me it plays more like a graphic afterschool special than a poignant work of art. I understand the message of showing the negative affects of drugs on the human body, but the film makes everything so extreme that it goes to the point of unrealism and almost humor about how graphic and morbid it has to make these people's lives in order to try to get it's message across. I would have understood that drugs are bad without seeing Leto's arm chopped off, Connelly made into a pathetic lowly whore getting screamed at by old men to shove a dildo in her ass while gyrating the other end with another young lady, Burstyn going clinically insane and being electroshocked (a technique that hasn't been used since the 80s) graphically and Wayans experiencing racism while stirring some potatoes. It just takes everything way too far into the extreme for me to appreciate it anymore. In terms of comparing it to the book, it suffers the same flaw that Fight Club does. It puts all of it's attention on one subject matter (the negative affects of drug use) and leaves the rest virtually nonexistent (the beautiful relationship between Harry and Marion turned into bitter hatred on the surface but remaining deep love internally, the strong connection of Harry and Tyrone turned into a distant mutual understanding of being around each other just so they can get another score, pretty much the entire story with Tyrone and his mother, etc. etc.) It puts little touches on these things, but brings them up and then jumps right back into the anti-drug message for 95% of the duration.