On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that I already knew most of this, mainly from having seen "Goodfellas," "Traffic," "Boogie Nights" and a host of other drug movies, of which "Blow" is a sentimental, dumbed-down knockoff. Director Ted Demme's exposé of real-life drug king George Jung is overwrought and underacted.
There is one thing you can say for Demme-in picking which movies to "borrow" from, he has impeccable taste. Too bad he has neither the talent nor the vision to pull all these disparate elements together into any sort of coherent, intelligent narrative.
Part of the problem lies in the starting material: the nonfiction book by Bruce Porter which chronicles the life of George Jung from half-pint to linchpin of the entire U.S. cocaine trade. The book's narrative, which is compelling, jumps around in time, a technique that works on the page but only intensifies the incoherence in the film.
The story starts in poor George's childhood, complete with a grossly overweight friend named Tuna (Ethan Suplee), a shrewish mother (Rachel Griffiths) and a hardworking though wimpy father played adequately but colorlessly by Ray Liotta (Mr. Goodfella himself). After an upsetting bankruptcy, George vows to never end up like his parents. The rest of the film chronicles George's attempt to live by his father's motto, "money is not real," by amassing unreal quantities of money and then summarily losing all of it.
Naturally, as the hero of this tale, George cannot jump straight to the top of the drug cartel but must live through a lightly-treated initiation sequence. After settling into the marijuana business with the local hairdresser/main pot supplier of Southern California, Derek Foreal (an affected, coquettish Paul Reubens), we see George lazily cavorting about the beach with his hippie friends, content in his "harmless" occupation.
George's switch from pot to cocaine seems less an inevitable slide deeper into the underground world of crime and drugs than an unfortunate misstep that could have easily been avoided. Another lesson to potential drug dealers: don't reach too high; stick with what you know best.
It is in prison, after being arrested for possession of marijuana, that George makes his real connection, Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla), who then introduces him to the now-legendary Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis), one of the main players in the Colombian-American cocaine trade. Among the three of them, they manage to create the cocaine chic that swept America in the '80s and supply over 85 percent of the cocaine consumed to the U.S.
Suddenly, everything goes wrong. George's wife Mirtha (Penelope Cruz) goes psycho. Why? We never really find out, although the sheer amount of cocaine she does could be a factor. Maybe it is the crippling poverty that descends on the family after George finds himself cut off from the world of drugs, betrayed by his "brother" Diego. Whatever the case may be, Cruz's drugged-out tantrums are amusing (though I think they are supposed to be sad and haunting), and it is worth five bucks just to hear her slur in that charming accent to George, as he is attempting to flee from a cop car, "Fuck me! Why don't you fuck me anymore?"
Surprisingly enough, there is some intentional humor in this movie. I don't think I've ever heard an audience cheer so loudly as when George's friend mentioned Amherst and UMass as centers of massive collegiate marijuana consumption, and George stealing a plane just by cutting the chain that binds the wheels together is amusing in that obligatory sort of way. Had "Blow" continued on its way of startling unoriginality with a few brisk moments of interest, it would have stayed inoffensive and maybe earned some points for cool costumes.
But then Demme decides to go for the heart strings. The result? The consummate "businessman" Jung is portrayed as a pathetic victim, struggling only to get by. And I think Demme swallows his own rhetoric, working to make the audience sympathize with George not despite his job as a coke dealer, but because of it. We should feel bad for George because he, damn the system, was set up again by his best friends, because all he wants to do is get back those 60 million dollars appropriated by some no-good South American bank, because he loves his daughter and just wants what is best for her. Good ol' American values.
Being a member of the audience for this movie embarrassed me-to think, Demme holds us in such low regard that he feeds us sentimental garbage with hardly any justification and, at the same time, manages to cannibalize several incredible films, expecting us not to notice.
Yes, I most definitely learned something from "Blow," something even more important than the melting point of pure cocaine (190 degrees Celsius)-something along the lines that rehashed pieces of great films in the hands of a second-rate director will invariably suck. And that no one should ever do cocaine. Oh wait, no, I didn't learn that at all …