'Blow'
Director:
Ted Demme
Stars:
Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Pencil Liotta
MPAA Rating:
R, for pervasive drug content and language, some violence and sexuality

Someday, Johnny Depp is going to section himself as he never has before, playing a well-adjusted, unswervingly-arrow guy. He gives us instead in "Blow" another of his precise etchings of depravity, although the film doesn't conceive of his character that way.
David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes based their screenplay on Bruce Porter's nonfiction book about George Jung (Depp), who credits himself with having imported about 85 percent of the cocaine consumed in the States at one point.
The character is given to us as the product of a contentious home. Papa Fred (Ray Liotta) was a hard-working, mild-mannered plumber who never earned enough to satisfy his braying, avaricious wife Ermine (an unrecognizable Rachel Griffiths, acting too much to offset the fact she's about five years younger than Depp).
Young Jung flees in 1968 to Manhattan Beach, Calif., with heavyset childhood buddy Tuna (Ethan Suplee). Within minutes, they make contact with gay hairdresser Derek (Paul Reubens), through whom they begin dealing pot in unprecedented quantities.
George in particular swiftly becomes legendary. He says he didn't want to work, at least not at a conventional job. The film implies he's motivated by a desire to avoid the kind of financial problems and disrespect shown by his mom to his father.
George's stewardess-girlfriend Barbara (Franka Potente of "Run, Lola, Run") uses her inspection-free luggage to cart pot to the allegedly drug-barren East Coast and collect payoffs.
When George inevitably is caught and imprisoned, he says he went in with a bachelor's of marijuana degree and came out with a doctorate of cocaine.
He and former cellmate Diego (Spain's Jordi Molla) almost overnight become the United States conduits for the Colombian cocaine cartel run by Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis).
George connects with the seductive Colombian beauty Mirtha (Penelope Cruz), who should wear a scarlet BN on her bodice for Bad News.
As directed by Ted Demme ("Life"), "Blow," a euphemism for cocaine, is less like "Traffic" than it is Martin Scorsese's gangster films "GoodFellas" and "Casino." Like them, it begins as a mesmerizing, methodical, briskly paced insider's view of crime. But whereas the Scorsese films penetrated their characters and milieus, going under the skin and into the heads to try and comprehend what passes for a criminal rationale, "Blow" skips over the hows and wherefore in its eagerness to genuflect at George's shrine.
At first, it's startling how often the story lurches forward to show a 180-degree turn in relationships. The leaps are a byproduct of a tale that spans nearly half a century and gets caught bounding from one key event to another. George's life, though, whatever its factual veracity in the film, feels progressively less lifelike.
At no point does "Blow" confront the monstrousness of what it depicts. George off-handedly observes he was simply good at what he did – you know, his more fiscally profitable version of plumbing.
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The effects on millions of other lives are reduced to the impact on George's inner circle – betrayals, fallings out and an occasional wasted look.
Throughout, George is sentimentalized with increasing insistence through his relationships with Barbara, his father and his daughter, even though the dichotomy in whom he professes to love and how he lives is irreconcilable.
"Blow" depicts him as a victim of other people's disloyalty and insensitivity. His dad is a good guy for being nonjudgmental no matter what. George's mother is demonized from the outset so the audience will sneer by the time she turns her son in.
Within its narrow range, "Blow" is quite well done. But it's so dishonest. The film never considers the ramifications of George's life and career, only what's done to him. The film ascribes honor to him. He's just a personable guy with a mean old mom who commits the only wholly understandable action in the film.
Ed Blank can be reached at (412) 854-5555 or
eblank@tribweb.com
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December 30th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment