Good, but it's Style over Substance (no pun intended)

Rating: Null/10 (27 May 2001)

Most of the reviews here have been, in my opinion, excessive with the praise. This is a good movie, but not a great one. Does this movie really get inside the mind of what it feels like to be a drug addict? Yes. Does this movie have some inventive, perhaps even pioneering, camera work? Yes. But does this movie really tell a story? Uh...no, can't give you that one.
I won't rehash the plot, but of the four characters, Ellen Burtsyn's was the only one with something resembling a story, and even hers is more of a stream-of-consciousness meditation on addiction. A very stylish and pounding stream-of-consciousness, but a stream-of-consciousness nonetheless. She wants to be on a game show, which never pans out, and in preparation for her TV appearance, she gets hooked on diet pills and goes nuts. The other three characters--well, they just wallow in their addiction until they are either in jail, turning tricks, or having limbs amputated.
Jared Leto's performance is passable, but he's really a bland actor out of his league with this material. Connelly and Wayans come off better, if only because their characters (at least in the movie version) are two-dimentional at best; the quality of the supporting performances mostly lie in their ability to convey the hunger of addiction in closeups and extreme closeups. Burstyn is certainly impressive, but after seeing this, I'm glad Julia Roberts won the Oscar instead (I can just hear the hardcore film buffs hissing at that).
As for the direction...well, yeah, it definitely makes you feel something, and it's not pleasant (but, of course, that's precisely the point). For conveying the feeling of addiction, I give this film lots of credit. Yet, the eye candy camera work only covers up the lack of depth in the story.
That being said, I'm reviewing this movie in comparison to conventional narrative films. I would be inclined to classify Requiem for a Dream in a slightly different category--rather than a narrative film, this is more of an experiment in visualizing the subjective experience of drug addiction. On that level, it's a perfect success. But the movie's more like one of those simulation amusement park rides--the theme being drug addiction, and it's a REALLY scary ride--and a satisfying STORY it is not.