Blow (Infinifilm Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Watch Georgie ride that white line right into a cell
Review: "Blow" is the kind of movie about drugs I can respect in one sense: it neither glorifies it nor condemns it, does not for one second pull a DARE moment on us, and yet allows us to see the essentially destructive nature of the indisputable scumbag George Jung's lifestyle.

Johnny Depp did a great job portraying Jung, and I'm sure if Jung had somehow slipped out of his cell and played himself the movie would have gone nowhere--keep in mind while watching Jung go from being a twenty year old with money on the brain to middle aged wreck, to the ultimate b**ch, that this is JOHNNY DEPP, not George Jung. I'm sure it was quite a bit less glamorous and charming in actuality.

Jung was moving weight. Serious weight. Weight enough to get him screwed over by his equally strung out friends and land in jail till 2014. He had his good times, but they were all predicated on fear and paranoia: you can practically sense the impending doom from every wonderfully hedonistic moment in this film.

Ray Liotta, as Jung's father is touching. His subtlety and seemingly endless empathy for Jung's skewed plight in life strikes a moving contrast to his mother, who after awhile simply wants nothing to do with Jung. He sticks (in a sense) with Depp's Jung right till the very end. The last few scenes are chilling and disturbing:Jung is betrayed by his friends in a cinematic moment few will forget.

My only problem with this movie is that it generates actually sympathy for George Jung as a man (the last picture of him flashed as Depp is hallucinating that his daughter is speaking with him is grotesque and shows the very real nature of the toll the use and decades of hustling took on him) and one wonders if this is appropriate at all. I tend to doubt that Jung cared that much about his daughter. If he did, maybe he wouldn't have wasted the best years of his life slinging coke. Plus, no major drugdealer would ever behave like this. During the course of the movie he is screwed over a billion times by just about everyone and seems pretty friendly about it afterwards. If Jung in fact conducted his "business" this way,
he was either really looped out on his own product or simply a stupid kid who was in the right time at the right place to sell tons of cocaine and had no basic idea of what he was doing.

This movie is a work of art, though, for all the moral ambiguity involved. Penelope Cruz is a delight to watch as his really nutty temporary wife. However it may be judged ethically, this is better than "Traffic" or "Requiem For a Dream".

Rating:
Summary: More Money More Problems
Review: For the movie Blow, the old saying holds true: The higher you go, the further you can fall. George Jung was the typical American, wanting nothing more but to get rich quick. The dramatic sequence of events summarized the history of cocaine in America and the biography of George Jung (Johnny Depp), largest American drug lord in the late 70's and early 80's. The drama just sucks you in filled with disappointment, lies, betrayal, deceit, money and drugs, the essentials that made Blow so well directed.
The main thing that makes this movie so interesting is the reality of it all. A lot of it is twisted a bit by Hollywood, but you can't help but watch in awe that this happened. This man was responsible for the drug of choice by the rich and famous three decades ago. If you bought cocaine in the late 70's, early 80's, chances are you got it from him. Jung trafficked more than ¾ of all cocaine that circulated America. This documentary leaves you stunned, keeping you tuned for was happens next.
It started off like most that spend their life, striving for prosperity. That's about the only connection I can make to my real life. His father didn't provide enough money for the family though he worked hard at it. Then you had the dissatisfied mother. George never wanted to be like that, so he took the fastest way to wealth. He started small time with marijuana on the California coast. Through that he found people to help with his smuggling operations. The story bases on his many mistakes that imprisoned him from time to time. That only gave him an outlet to bigger and better crimes.
Throughout the movie you're not sure whether you feel bad for the man, or whether he was simply not careful enough. For example, the one scene where his wife, Mirtha, purposely gets him arrested ironically gives you remorse. The director did a great job with the importance of money. Money is such a big theme all the way through. Millions of dollars are presented in your face to make a huge impact of what George has gained, yet what he could lose. It's basically how the small town kid made 100 million dollars and lost it all.
As far as acting goes, again Johnny Depp stars in another great movie. Penelope Cruz co-stars as his flamboyant, deceitful wife, Mirtha. The characters they act are artificial to each other, bringing the main point across. Realistically, the tie between them was only of money. When the money was gone instantly, so were they, showing how unhealthy their lifestyles were based on.
Like they say, more money, more problems. Blow focuses on the dramatic aspects more than anything. There's a little comedy and a little action with gunplay but that's it. They don't take much distraction from the drama. It makes the movie seem about an hour longer than it really is because of all the problems. Jung lost his money, his family, his business, he lost it all. The film puts out a heavy message about what you can lose. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to step out of reality for a few hours.



Rating:
Summary: I was highly entertained through all of it!
Review: Johnny Depp is his usual very low key self in this, but this time he is at the top of the drug-dealer heap and living la vida loco to the max. When he is up he is WAY up. I personally liked seeing the amazing excess in materialism that being a top drug czar provides, so I enjoyed this a lot. It sort of fulfilled a secret fantasy I guess, without the high price of spending the rest of my life locked up like what eventually happened to the poor mindless drug king that Depp played. I especially liked Penelope Cruz as his gorgeous cocaine addicted wife. She was so great but wasn't given nearly enough script. She just looked so CRAZED at that huge party with that giant overflowing bowl of coke held up high over her head as she staggers through the crowd. And oh yes let's not forget the actor that used to be PeeWee Herman (Paul Rubens) as Depp's fellow drug czar and partner. They should put him in many more movies because he is just so much FUN to watch. What a HOOT.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely boring
Review: This film seemed to drag out for hours and hours. When you find the occasional high point in this film, where you can be mildly entertianed, it ends to quickly and you are thrust back into the world of monotany that makes up 90 percent of this film. Johnny Depps acting was good, and his portrayal of the character was good, but this movie just seemed to never go anywhere. Never exciting, never thrilling, you feel like youre just watching hours worth of random consecutive events of some man's life. The ending of the movie is heartbreaking, and the message that his father give him becomes cruelly ironic all throughout the film, but i cant give credit to the filmakers for either of those thigns because they were real facts, not anything the directors thought up. Overall, just plain BLAND