Blow (2001)

Note: This page includes review and revision entry.

A Biopic with Moderately Weak Offerings

The conventional biopic will follow the life story of a man or a woman, offering the audience insight into understanding the subject, hopefully evoking sympathy for the trials of the life on display, and potentially moving the viewer with its human drama. Blow is more or less a conventional biopic. It is competently produced, directed, and acted. Unfortunately, it suffers from a notably weak offering of two of the above three criteria I mentioned.

We are offered the story of George Jung, whose claim to fame is being one of the most effective cocaine traffickers in the U.S. It is narrated by Jung, played coolly and effectively by Johnny Depp. The beginning scene shows him at the table working a deal, and, shortly after, the flashback that will effectively be the movie begins. We start at Jung's childhood in Boston, with a father (Ray Liotta) who works hard but has little money to show for it. His mother is portrayed unsympathetically as a money-grubbing shrew, who often screams at his father, runs away from home, and always returns. Father loves mother enough to absorb her tirades and welcome her back on several occasions; however, little George is less forgiving. He pities his father and swears he will never live like this.

Flash forward to when George is a young man, starting off with change in his pocket and moving to California with his childhood best friend in tow. There, he meets some free-spirited California women who introduce him to pot. Soon George is introduced to the source of the pot: Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens), a moderately flaming hair salon keeper. At this point, things are on a roll. George and his friend begin selling pot to the locals in California, and then another old friend helps him sell the pot back home on the east coast. Before long, George, Derek, and company are all rolling in the dough.

The story continues straightforwardly. It doesn't take long before the merchandise is replaced by cocaine, and George is involved with Colombian drug lords, millions of dollars, and nearly all of the United States as customers. The life offers a mix of luxuries and good times with hardships and regrets. However, when George is finally blessed with a baby daughter, he puts his life in perspective.

The problem up to that point, though, has been the presentation of the character. Blow has the challenging task of offering up a protagonist whose business is unsavory and objectionable. This means that the man starts off as unsympathetic, and then we as the audience have to be convinced that his story is worth sitting through. To begin with, while we are sad to see the kind of childhood he had, we don't really identify with his moving to California as a young man to, as his best friend puts it, make ends meet without getting a job. To make fast and easy money, he and his friends get into the drug business, and he makes profiting in the business look easy. He does get caught and goes to jail, but unfortunately all that does is give him a new drug partner to look up when he gets out, ready to get into the drug market again with the higher-stakes cocaine this time. At one point his character comments that if anyone was using cocaine in the '70's, it mostly likely came from him and his partner. Thus, although so far we, the viewers, get along with his cool and unassuming personality, we can't really feel we can root for or identify with him.

It has its good points up through half-way through the film. The direction by Ted Demme is crisp albeit apparently borrowed from Goodfellas, utilizing freeze frames and photo montages to move parts of the story. Paul Reubens and Franke Potente, as George's first love, play memorable parts. George's amoral business choices can almost be forgiven and attributed to the follies of youth. But then the second half of the movie hits.

Here its focus changes, and the air becomes drearier and sadder. George finds that having a daughter is the best thing that has happened to him, and everything he wants to do now is for his daughter. But his life will slowly fall to pieces now. And, all the while, the audience may start to feel that he does deserve the things that happen to him. By the end, he'll seem to feel that he has deserved it too. It's all about regret, but his regret doesn't seem to stem from anywhere besides the fact that he has let down his daughter. And so we're a bit sad for him, but, unfortunately, we don't feel too sorry for him because he was never forced to do what he did; everytime he got in to the game, he had clear and distinct choices. Also, we are not moved by the story; we feel as if we observed something that, on its own, didn't give us too much cause to attach ourselves emotionally to the drama or events.

I haven't even mentioned Penelope Cruz, who has a relatively small but grating role in the last half of the movie. However, I wasn't paying much attention to her. I was noticing that the movie was winding down to full biopic gear; no fancy storytelling going on, just a straight and melodramatic narrative. I was wondering how I would feel about this character at the end of the movie. My answer was this: I felt indifferent. George Jung made bad choices in life when he never really had to. He ended up regretting what he had done, but not because the wretched effects of his work wrecked so many lives in the country (a subject untouched by the movie). Rather, it was because his own life was wrecked. His life can prove a lesson, perhaps, to other aspiring drug dealers out there, but as for the story itself I didn't feel I could really take anything home with me. Blow is, at best, an interesting story, and that's about it.

Rating: 6/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Apr. 10, 2001

REVISION

In my 2001 Hindsight article, I wrote about Blow:

What was I thinking? Here was a movie asking its audience to boo-hoo over the fate of a remarkably short-sighted yet lucky simpleton who committed a major sin on our country. I guess I liked the performances at that time. I think I also forgot what a good movie was and felt that this one came close. Well, not anymore. It's a 4/10.

Revised Rating: 4/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Jan. 13, 2002

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