Pubdate: Fri, 06 Apr 2001
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2001 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/homepage.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: John Anderson, Staff Writer

DEPP IS IN HIS CRIMINAL ELEMENT

(2 STARS) BLOW. (R) Whose line is it anyway: The rise and fall of the 
original American cocaine tycoon, with all the music and leisure suits but 
few of the casualties. With Johnny Depp, Jordi Molla, Paul Reubens, 
Penelope Cruz, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths. Screenplay by David McKenna 
and Nick Cassavetes, from the book by Bruce Porter. Directed by Ted Demme. 
2:03 (violence, nudity, vulgarity, drug use). At area theaters.

RAY LIOTTA'S PRESENCE aside, "Blow" is a film that could hardly have 
existed without "Goodfellas," and not just because both movies are 
fascinated by the mechanics of crime and its influence on culture.

Both films share the same melancholic narration, the same fondness for 
abrupt violence, the same Polaroid approach to sociology.

Where they differ can be summed up by their soundtracks: Martin Scorsese 
had Derek and the Dominoes, Ted Demme has the Marshall Tucker Band. Need we 
say more? Probably not, except to repeat the ol' chicken-egg, CD-movie 
question: Which came first? Based on the real-life story of George Jung-the 
Massachusetts-born chucklehead who provided the conduit for Pablo Escobar 
to establish cocaine as America's drug of choice in the late '70s and early 
'80s-"Blow" stars Johnny Depp in one of his characteristically adventurous 
roles.

Never one to follow the conventional path of Hollywood stardom, which he 
might easily have done, Depp has consistently chosen eccentric parts in 
idiosyncratic films ("Dead Man," "Arizona Dream," "Before Night Falls"), 
and "Blow" is no exception: Jung, bleached blond and badly dressed, is 
basically an idiot, a born criminal with a criminal's vacuity.

And while being the centerpiece of any major motion picture automatically 
bestows hero status on any given character, Depp does his best to keep Jung 
in his place-low-rent, low-brow and low-down.

The problem with "Blow" is director Ted Demme ("Beautiful Girls," the 
underrated "Life"), who's certainly not on the same page as Depp, and 
scriptwriters Nick Cassavetes and David McKenna, who have rendered out of 
Bruce Porter's book a screenplay of accomplished idiocy.

We hate to break it to them, but Jung is interesting only when he's dealing 
drugs-first as a transplanted Californian distributing bales of marijuana, 
later as the country's premier coke smuggler, making so much money he trips 
over it. His personal life-marriage to the beautiful but venomous Mirtha 
(Penelope Cruz), his relationship with his parents (Liotta and Rachel 
Griffiths) and his young daughter (Emma Roberts) -are of limited interest, 
largely because of the maudlin way Demme handles it, but also because amid 
all our presumed sympathy for Jung, there's never any recognition of the 
swath of tragedy cut through this country by cocaine, Jung or his ilk.

Depp aside, the acting is almost uniformly atrocious-although it's hard to 
make hay out of this dialogue.

Griffiths seems to have decided to take up residency on another planet 
entirely, playing Jung's mother Ermine as a combination Nurse Ratched/Ming 
the Merciless with a Boston accent that could grind glass.

She's funny, if incongruous. Best among the supporting cast is probably 
Paul Reubens (the erstwhile Pee Wee Herman) as Jung's partner Derek, who 
plays his part very matter-of-factly, and refreshingly so.

You walk away from "Blow" feeling that the crime film-as-cultural autopsy 
has been done to death-"Scarface," "Goodfellas" and "Boogie Nights," to 
name just a few movies to which "Blow" is in debt. But there was room for 
this, if only Demme had known how to balance his material.

What is the point of the prelude-Jung's move from Massachusetts to 
California, his entree into pot dealing, and his love affair with the 
doomed Barbie (Franka Potente of "Run Lola Run") -especially since it eats 
up as much film as Jung's time amid the Medellin Cartel? Why not find the 
crest of the narrative somewhere amid Jung's numerous busts, rather than 
prolonging the movie into his less-than-fascinating prison life? At the 
risk of being redundant, we don't really care about Jung. We care about the 
very reasons he's expendable. Deals are often made in getting a real 
person's story on screen, but making George Jung into a person was too high 
a price for "Blow."
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