Blow (Blow (DVD))

Member Name: stevepeto

Product:	Blow (DVD)
Date:	09/11/07 (255 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Johnny Depp, Acting

Disadvantages: Glamorises a filthy trade

>>>The Film<<<
George Jung (Johnny Depp) vows never to struggle in life as his father, Fred (Ray Liotta) has done. So as soon as he is able, he and his best friend Tuna (Ethan Suplee) move to California where they get involved in some low level supplying of weed to the locals. It is here in California where he meets Barbara (Franka Potente), the love of his life and between them and a few other people including Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens) they start to move small amounts of weed back to their home town, this is aided by the fact that Barbara is an air stewardess.

Tragedy strikes and after a spell in jail he meets Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla) who arranges him to meet ones of the worlds most dangerous drug criminals of the time, one Pablo Escobar. George doesn't look back, getting involved in the Medellin Cartel and supplying an estimated 85% of all Cocaine into the United States.

In an attempt to find love again Jung gets married to Mirtha (Penélope Cruz) and they have a child Kristina. But Mirtha is not as loving or as supportive as Barbara and her Latin temperament shines through when things aren't going her way, we soon see George emulating the situation his father found himself in many years before.

To be honest I didn't know until the very end that this was based on a true story. I either missed the bit at the beginning where it states that, or it just wasn't there. But had I known then I think my opinion of the film may have been different. I took this as a work of fiction, following the life and path of one fictitious character through the ups and downs of life as a drug trafficker. The film gave us a glossed up and romanticised view of this life and what great fun it was to get laid and smoke pot in the Californian sun and then the fun lifestyle that the Cocaine brought him, not the greatest of messages to put people off.

Then there are the ending statements where we find out (for those that didn't A: read the beginning (if it was there) or B: Just plain didn't know) that this George Jung is a real person, serving a real life prison sentence (until 2014, ouch). How can I sympathise with this man? After all he is, or I should say was, a drug trafficker, bringing in bucket loads of Cocaine into the states, which in turn caused untold misery for millions of users and their families over the years. How can I truly feel sorry for a person like that? It certainly isn't ever mentioned in the movie, and as this is a Biopic of the man I must assume that he never actually gave a passing thought to the lives he was destroying, this is George Jung's world, and we just live in it.

The film was never about the drug trade directly, nor was it about the users, which is a good thing as if it was there would be people watching this film and then setting up in the trafficking trade the morning after. it is simply about George Jung a guy that made some pretty crap choices which eventually land him with that big prison sentence, and to give George that sympathetic edge who better to play him than Johnny Depp, a brilliant actor with such an impressive range of acting that he goes from playing a teenager up to and including a middle aged man.

Liotta and Molla are worthy of special mention too. Liotta who plays Fred is a likeable guy who tries to do the best for his family, all the time hampered by his materialistic wife Ermine (Rachel Griffiths), he disagrees with what his son has turned too but doesn't argue about it and "goes with the flow". Molla as Deigo goes from likeable rogue to complete arse and I'm sure I could detect some actual madness in there as I could when I saw him as Johnny Tapia in Bad Boys 2. The rest of the supporting cast all give good accounts for themselves although I feel that Franka Potente really deserves space on the front cover as I feel she displayed a character that we actually felt for than the fiery Mirtha, but I guess Penelope Cruz on the front cover sells more disks.

I have to say by the end of the movie I feel sorry for the George, I thought it a tragedy that his daughter never came to see him in prison. But in reality it was the character that Depp portrayed that made me feel that way and not Jung himself, as the last scenes fade from the screen and we see George Jungs face, sorrow etched within his face, we realise that he made all his own choices and that his dealings with the Medellin Cartel brought misery to millions, and he ultimately got his comeuppance, he may well be sorry for what he did, (its never mentioned if he apologised) but I think that the families of those that bought the product he brought into the country were sorry he was not locked up sooner..

As an after thought, I found it quite ironic that less than a year after the release of Blow, the Director Ted Demme died of a Cocaine induced heart attack.

>>>Overall:<<<
I thought that Blow was a really good film, It covers a good few decades of Jungs life and shows him dealing with the highs and lows of the trade he chose, all the actors are superb and that benefits the film no end. I didn't like the romanticised high life of the drug trafficker or that it seemed to push us to feel sorry of the real life Jung at the end, but looking it as a film only I can thoroughly recommended it.

Review originally posted by me on Digital Lard - http://www.digitallard.com/moviereview/734/index.h tm

Summary: see review for overall opinion