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Blow (Infinifilm Edition)

Blow (Infinifilm Edition)

List Price: $19.96
Your Price: $14.97
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: will blow get you high?
Review: this film concentrates on the life of George jung who became the larest importer of columbian cocaine in american history. the film throughout is very stylish and thought provoking. the film follows the life of george jung as he rises through the drug business eventually becomming pabloescobars Main Man. Although the film has many good parts however, it is overall let down by its lack of action and can get alittle boring. to say it tells the story of one of the most notorious drug lords of the 20th century there isnt enough goin on to warrent the 2 hours plus that the movie lasts.instead of being a narcotic adventure the film feels ke more of a dope opera which i didnt expect. Apart from that this is an entertaining film that is extremely welldirected and well polished. its a good film and there is no argument about hat,however dont expect blow to get you high.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome
Review: The movie is not necessarily what I expected from the previews-but it rocked. As an added bonus, the good guy (if that is what you can call George Jung) didn't win, which always causes a thumbs up.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good
Review: This was a good movie showing a small part of the history of the drug trade in America. I was expecting more action, i.e. shoot outs, ext. Even without the action I thought this movie was still very enjoyable.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: DEPP strikes again !!
Review: Johnny Depp continues his tradition of not selling out completely to the mainstream and making movies that are, at the least, intriguing. BLOW is a good movie, technically very well-crafted, not overlong, not indulgent. Of course I don't care the least about JUng's final destiny, I hope he rottens in jail. Penelope Cruz is the only weak actor performance here. All in all, a good movie without purpose.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: DEPP COULDN'T SAVE THIS ONE
Review: This film portrays large scale drug dealers as guerilla marketing experts. It's long on make-up and period costume and short on cool dialogue or good acting. Hispanic actors portray Columbians using exaggerated accents and they appear more middle eastern than latin american. Good cameos by Ray Liotta and Pee-Wee Herman. The film is based on one convict's memoir, and it presents an interesting point or two, but everything in this film has been covered before, in better films.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: blow
Review: loved the movie! Johnny Depp is fabulous and keeps you on
the edge of your seat. Music is awesome!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: good, but bends the facts more than a little.....
Review: This film presses all the right buttons, but being touted as basically the true-life story of George Jung, I was disappointed that the film paid little respect to the chronology of significant events and completely overlooked many of the defining moments of George's career.

Having already read the book "Blow" - available from Amazon and an excellent biography - perhaps I found it more difficult to get "into" the movie, often asking myself "why is this happening/not happening now?" amongst other things...

A few obvious changes for dramatic effect, perhaps.....

1. George's first girlfriend (played by the babelicious Franka Potente) tell's George she has an incurable disease, so he skips bail to hang out with her in Mexico until she dies. In actual fact, the girlfriend was dumped pretty quickly, was never fatally-ill (interviewed for the book) and was one of a long, long succession of girls that George used and discarded during his "career". He skipped to Mexico purely because he didn't want to go to jail, and move into "quantity" smuggling of marijuana.

2. George is basically kidnapped and taken to Colombia to meet Pablo Escobar, - a test - and this meeting "starts" the whole coke business. In fact however, George had been importing/dealing large quantities of coke for a few years before going to meet Pablo - something he did voluntarily on his own, to gain status among the Florida-based Columbians and gain favour with Pablo in his problems with Carlos Lehder - a cartel member.

The movie ignores or trivialises many of George's character traits - huge long-term coke usage and the resultant psychosis and paranoia, his life-long addiction to hookers, kinky sex, including masochistic tendencies played-out by cross-dressing (french maid)and being dominated and "spanked" by his wife while tied spread-eagled to their marital bed, among many others.

The turning point, the start of his "real" troubles is when George confides his secrets to an undercover cop whom he meets one afternoon on the beach out-front of his house. In short-order, George invites the guy into his house, tells the cop that he's a big-time smuggler and immediately makes him part of the "operation" without knowing anything about the guy. This of course brings big heat onto George, and the good-guys start engineering George's downfall.

The movie omits this entire pivotal event however, perhaps because the real-life event, that for a genuine big-time dealer with $30m stashed in the house,at least, displayed a degree of stupidity and naievety that would make Johnny Depp's George (smart, hip, trusting)look stupid and just too unbelievable to be sympathetic.

Nor is there any factual basis for the whole father/daughter interplay in the movie, which I personally think is overdone, and is pretty out-of-character anyway.

Finally (at least for this review) the money George had stashed away in Panama, approx. $50m apparently, was not confiscated by the Panamanian Govt (Noriega)- George never visited Panama - but was stolen by the pilots who opened the bank account for George, (co-signatories) and flew the cash down on a regular basis over several years. It defies belief that over several years, George never thought to enquire about the balance of his account, and just kept shuttling the cash into the account, but that's what actually happened.

Carlos Lehder was arrested in Colombia - basically fingered by Escobar for bringing the heat down on the cartel because of his loopy political beliefs, extradited to the States, with George being the main prosecution witness. This gained George early release, and it was actually another bust in the mid-80's that reulted in George's present incarceration. Again, none of this was in the movie, although I think it would have brought another perspective to George's characterisation, and also given George some revenge for his beating by Carlos' thugs on Norman Cay (never happened) had it been included.

I guess all these and many more factual inaccuracies in combination with Johnny Depp's overly sympathetic portrayal of George - almost a victim of circumstance - and definitely too "nice" to be in the drug business, are so far off the real-deal that it made it very difficult for me to give this movie the respect that so many others think it deserves....

All this doesn't stop the movie being good entertainment but I can't help thinking how good it "could" have been, had it been a little more true to George's real story.

The cast is generally outstanding, the look and sound of the DVD transfer never less than luscious, and the soundtrack really brought back the 70s / early 80s for me - a time of bad fashion, worse haircuts, and for most of us, a time probably best forgotten.

Buy the DVD. The book "blow" is definitely worth reading, and if you're still interested in the whole coke thing, consider checking out the book titled "Killing Pablo" a factual look at the the coke business, the Medelin cartel, and the hunt-for and eventual killing of Pablo Escobar. Now "there's" a movie just begging to be made......

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Okay film, Great DVD
Review: Review is divided into two parts: Movie itself, and DVD extras

Movie:

Explain to me for whom I am supposed to feel sympathy or empathy? Jung? I don't think so. He created his dilemma through his own actions, without any regard for the effect of his actions. I guess I have a hard time enjoying a movie with neither a sympathetic protagonist nor a social message. This film lacks both.

That being said, the filmmaking side of the movie is impressive, from cinematography to soundtrack. Depp does a serviceable job with the material with which he is presented.

DVD:

This DVD features Infinifilm, which can best be described as VH-1's pop-up video experience transferred to a DVD. The feature is quite impressive (and would have been more impressive if I had liked the movie). It seems best suited to this type of film: historical. Put another way, I don't need to see the Infinifilm version of "Dude, Where's My Car?"

The DVD also features (as part of the Infinifilm) characters comments regarding other characters, deleted scenese, George Jung interviews, and various other minutiae. This concept is quite impressive, but it would be better with a better film to supplement.

The film is a 3 star, the infinifilm a 5 star, for a 4 star average.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Sugar Smack"
Review: I saw this movie about a month ago, I was amazed that one man almost single- handedly brought the cocane trade to the U.S.
George Jung, made over 100 million importing/selling powder.
The storyline is very compelling, and the acting was awesome.
The ending of the story was kind of ironic, but none the less
a very good movie.If you do not see but one drug cartel movie, please see BLOW!!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Really good
Review: Wow...I have to tell you that as much as this was compared to other recent cocaine movies, like Traffic, this movie reminds me of nothing less than Goodfellas. The characters are very much brothers from different mothers. Very good comparison. And to anyone who has entertained notions about Penelope Cruz' sexiness, you may be in for a rude surprise.

Having said that, since Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz are dating, well, doesn't it take a special kind of ego for someone to date someone else because their last names are pronounced the same?


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