Blow is as garish as neon and tirelessly literal.
Like a less manic Requiem for a Dream , Blow is so enthralled with frantic technique it allows effects to squash the human, expository elements in the drama. Director Ted Demme has not only seen Goodfellas , he's shot it up and puked it out verbatim. Blow has Scorsese's frantic momentum but the kind of cartoonish glorification of its scruffy hero and flat, cardboard view of good and evil, male and female, that more often resembles the grandiose, self-important storytelling of Oliver Stone. In Blow life isn't cheap, but talk is and dialogue runs toward the trite, with Demme's clear preference being for visual exposition. Blow shows far more chutzpah and perversity on the part of costume designer Mark Bridges than on that of the screenwriters or director.