Product: Blow [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 5.0
I Was Pleasantly Surprised.....
After reading the mixed reviews on this movie, I watched it with a high level of skepticism, but was quickly impressed by this movie, except I do have to say that Penelope Lopez's character got under my skin pretty quickly....perhaps another actress could have brought more depth to the role...? Anyway, it kind of reminded me of watching Miami Vice, only from the other side and it was fascinating to watch how a small time drug dealer came to have one of the largest drug empires in U.S. History in such a short period of time. I especially like one of the first scenes when they show cocaine being made in Columbia....leaves are ground up, turned into a paste, spread out on a table to dry, thus turning it into a powder firm which is then measured out to be distributed. It also causes you to feel for the Columbian people who are poor, and thus reliant on exporting this drug for economic survival....makes for a complicated political/moral situation. I even felt myself feeling a little sorry for George Jung towards the end, but I could have felt more so if he had displayed more emotion throughout the film. It was sad to see his friends of all those years suddenly turn on him in order to save themselves from the Feds. Just goes to show you what a ruthless business drug dealing is and like his dad said in the begining "money isn't all that important....it only seems like it is"...this could also be seen when he lost nearly all his money when his foreign bank was taken over by the new government. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the movie wasn't as overly violent as it could have been given the subject matter...I think only two people were shot during the entire movie. Just goes to show you that a movie doesn't have to rely on violence and gore to be good...a good storyline can support it alone.....other movies today could learn from this. The only thing I couldn't understand is why Johnny Depp bleached his hair blonde for the role when according to the photo shown at the end, the real George Jung was a brunette....?