“Come in, we have red walls.”
George Jung (Johnny Depp) grew up poor, never went to university, and made 60 million dollars before he was 30. Of course he lost it all before he was 40, but still, what losers you studying types must be eh?
Blow follows the transition from humble pot dealer to beach bums, to Pablo Escobar’s go-to white boy. Ironically while pot proved profitable and the good times were indeed very good, it is a stint in prison that showed Jung the error of his ways… And from the cell emerged a smarter, better, and more savvy drug dealer, with the specialty moving to the fine white powder that would dominate the eighties and nineties.
At least that’s what cinema tells me.
Featuring a top notch cast including Ray Liotta, Penelope Cruz and many others, Blow is a perfectly efficient telling of the well worn drug kingpin story. It is ok, but I would venture that by now it is an all too easy story to tell. Find impressionable guy, give him a ‘lightbulb moment’, then simply drip feed sufficient highs and lows around either a morality tale or anti-hero story – whichever route you choose to take…
It’s actually exactly the same cookie cutter template as the fiercely overrated Wolf of Wall Street.
Blow gives Jung the big house, the fast cars and the explosive women, as demanded by every second rap cd. It also gives the remorse, the fair weather friends and the backstabbing. After all, not every drug dealer gets the Scarface poster treatment.
Blow is just another one of those most frustrating films; the very well done genre piece that I would happily never watch again.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Another film from the 90s Johnny Depp doesn’t remember being in.
