Rating: 
Summary: Nice work, but no "Traffic"
Review: The folks that put this together did a nice job. They captured an era and a lifestyle very well while telling their story. They signed a terrific lead actor, and a great supporting cast that reminded me dead-on of several people I knew in college. Very watchable, and a good biography. What keeps it from a higher rating is partially the bad luck of it being released around the time of the far superior "Traffic". But besides telling you that one man was more responsible than others for the explosion of cocaine in this country 25 years ago, there's not much else. While the movie certainly doesn't portray George Jung as a hero, it is asking for sympathy when things important to him are finally taken away. However, here is a person who did NOTHING but deal drugs for a living all his adult life. Now I can buy the arguement that he was just supplying what the people wanted, and the purchasers are just as guilty as the supplier. But there are two problems I have with this. First, the movie goes to great pains to show that he wasn't necessarily a violent man, although he did carry a gun and threatened people with it. But his close association with Pablo Escobar, who was a merciless killer, puts Jung big time in guilt by association. For this I have no sympathy for the man. Second, this guy did his second swing in prison because he was under surveillance for his first pinch. He knew very well the cops were watching him, yet practically sets himself up for the bust. With all that, and knowing that the government was REALLY observing him after his second visit to prison, what does he do? Goes out and becomes part of another big deal. Like Henry Hill in "Goodfellas", it never occurs to him that there are other ways to get money, albeit not as quickly. I think society sometimes has to lock up stupid people to protect them from themselves. Overall, I did like the movie, and recommend it. But for someone who has lived totally for himself all his life, and in his forties all of a sudden has a child, this doesn't make you a nice person. Yes, prison is bad when it takes away the things you like, but then that's the point.
Rating: 
Summary: "A Paean To All Disciples of Scorcese"
Review: "Blow" is Ted Demme's attempt to be Martin Scorcese for a couple of hours. Demme borrows so much from Scorcese's style in 'Goodfellas' (the flashbacks with 50's-60's music on the soundtrack; freeze frames and voice over narration) it's as if Scorcese is in the wings shouting instructions. "Blow" details the story of George Jung, who, growing up watching his hard working father drowning in both a sea of debt and the constant nagging of a shrewish wife, vows never to experience poverty himself. Jung goes from peddling pot to college kids to become a full fledged drug kingpin doing business with Pablo Escobar and the Colombian cartel. Johnny Depp is a fine actor, but the screenplay doesn't give him all that much to work with...Penelope Cruz as Jung's Colombian wife is gorgeous, but she can't act and when she's emasculating Depp in one particular scene, the result is almost laughable ("you are a Poosy!"). The whole thing leaves you with an empty feeling buoyed by the realization that you've just watched a two hour film about a guy whose chief accomplishments in life were dealing drugs and going to prison. **** The DVD package is excellent and includes some worthwhile special features including an interview with the real George Jung and a series of deleted scenes....Depp's more detailed scenes with Escobar, cut from the final print, were superb and if left in, would have given "Blow" a much needed lift.
Rating: 
Summary: 5 Stars don't mean everything
Review: I think that this movie has a great plot and just because it is primarily based on drugs people judge this movie completely the wrong way. I did give it five stars but that doesn't mean its like the best movie I've ever seen cause there is alot of movies that I would five stars to for what ever I think that they are great for but BLOW has a great messege and after reading a lot of other reviews I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of people who don't know what their talking about.
Rating: 
Summary: DOPE DEALING DEBACLE....
Review: I initially had no interest in this film, thinking who wants to see a movie about some two bit dope dealer? My teenage son, however, rented the DVD, and I found myself a captive audience. To my surprise, it was a riveting, well done film. Sure, it was about a two bit dope dealer, but what a story. George Jung, an all American kid from a hard working, hard knocks family, begins dealing marijuana during the 1960s. He develops his business into an empire, and then he decides to branch out into the sexier world of cocaine and really big money. Using his considerable entrepreneurial instinct, he makes a deal with the Columbian drug cartel. Before you know it, he is raking in millions. Unfortunately, the best laid plans often go awry, and there is no fairy tale ending for George. This is a story of hopes, dreams, violence, greed, and betrayal. Well directed by the late Ted Demme, the film is compelling and absorbing as it recounts George Jung's incredible odyssey in the drug trade, tracking the rise of the cocaine industry in the United States, attendant with all its violence. Johnny Depp, in the role of George Jung, makes him into a likable guy who has bitten off more than he can chew, with ultimately dire results. His is a search for the American Dream, a dream that forever remains elusive. Ray Liotta is terrific in the role of George's father, Fred Jung, a sensitive and devoted everyman married to a hard, selfish woman, Ermine Jung, a woman who lacks all motherly instincts and is played with gritty determination by Rachel Griffiths. Jordi Molla is excellent in the role of Diego, George's entre into the world of high stakes, cocaine dealing, and Cliff Curtis is excellent as Escobar, the Columbian drug cartel's main man. Penelope Cruz is terrible as George's beautiful Latina wife, Mirtha. She is simply a bad actress whose English is often unintelligible. With the exception of Ms. Cruz, however, the cast is uniformly excellent. This is the story about a young man who, faced with choices in his life, made the wrong ones and lived to regret it. Johnny Depp captures the pathos of Jung's wasted life. That his characterization is dead on is brought home by Ted Demme's wonderful interview of the real George Jung. This interview is one of the numerous bonus features on this DVD and is well worth watching. It is a poignant interview, as it underscores that Jung's was a life wasted. It also serves to illustrate just how remarkable Depp's characterization of Jung really is. All in all, this is a vibrant, informative, and entertaining film.
Rating:
Summary: I cried harder the second time
Review: This is an amazing movie, with an amazing cast and an amazing story.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it 'cause you like the movie, not for the "extras"
Review: This is a review of the DVD, not the film itself--which has its own set of problems in this fascinating true story delivered in a very inconsistent, flawed fashion. But I digress...on to the DVD. "A" for concept, "D" for execution. It's hard to believe that anyone actually reviewed and checked the results before this went into production. Both Video and audio are quite good--a very clean, impressive job that truly makes watching this film enjoyable and worthwhile. It's on the Infinifilm extras where this DVD comes up extremely weak. Though a few are terrific additions--the interview/comments with the real George Jung, for example--others appear to be slap-dash efforts at filling up the disk and giving the impression that there's real quality within. A good example is the so-called "Fact Track," which is designed to play as subtitles in the Infinifilm version of the movie. "Fact Track?" Hah! Loads of typos/spelling errors (heroine instead of heroin in one passage, for example), factual errors (Woodstock Festival--"Three Days of Peace and Music" as it occurred in 1969--has an extra fourth day added here by the creators of the "Fact Track"), random "Facts" that come in places that often demonstrate little rhyme or reason for their location in the film and hop all over the map without any real sense of organization, bio subtitles about some of the cast but not others, a blatantly unbalanced anti War on Drugs message which is rendered so via tons of stats on (what I agree is) the huge waste of federal monies and effort in this regard WITHOUT ANY mention or statistics on the still ongoing devastation wreaked upon our country by cocaine and, by his involvement, George Jung. The Documentary on the effects of cocaine on Colombia is pretty good and important given the lack of mention in the film itself, but at times the people speaking (in Spanish with English subtitles) talk so rapidly that in some spots it's nearly impossible to both follow the dialogue and the picture without watching again. (Maybe that's the trick! "You'll watch it over and over again!") The Production Diary--short video excerpts on various random days of the 63-day shoot--includes an excerpt from one day which consists entirely of an audio track that is normal like the rest but accompanied by video which consists entirely of the camera pointed down at the pavement. Intriguing. Last but not least, the Infinifilm feature itself--think VH1's "Pop-up Videos"--is fabulous in concept but a failure too often in execution to really be worthwhile. Some extras (most deleted or alternate scenes, for example) appear exactly where logical, such as the alternate Intro. Others pop up in places that seem to be entirely random (Ted Demme's filmography, which pops up not with the opening credits, but instead somewhere deep within the film.) Some just don't fit where they are at all in a fashion that leaves one believing that the creators weren't even paying attention (or perhaps had just done some BLOW) when they inserted them (a jump to a spot about Otisville FCI pops up early in the film when George is sent to Danbury FCI instead of at the end when we see him in the Upstate New York slammer.) The most useful and enjoyable part of Infinfilm (an overall concept which has the potential to be phenomenal!) is the ability to see alternate versions of scenes in direct A/B comparison to the ones that made the final cut. Look, I don't HATE this DVD package and did enjoy the film and exploring the disk, but its features are WAY OVER-HYPED and fall short of the sell-job done on them. Unabashed fans of the film will probably love them all regardless of the "Facts." Do other Infinifilms have similar problems? This is the first Infifinifilm I've seen. One note about the film and its screenplay. Both contain an error early in the film (in the mid 1960's) when George, Tuna, and his other bud from Mass. are discussing the colleges back in Mass. where they can sell their weed. One school that they mention is Hampshire College, which didn't enroll its first class until 1970. FACT CHECKING, FACT CHECKING. Can't believe no one in production caught that, given the comparatively large number of Hampshire grads who work in the film industry. OK, OK, I'm done....
Rating:
Summary: Another American Story
Review: Its easy to feel compassion for George Jung, and BLOW, certainly tries to stoke compassion, but the true quality of this movie is the way it tells a classic American tale about ambition and greed through an everyman, a small man. This is no hero, more a stooge of larger forces, like the Columbian gangs he introduced to American markets, and American law. Johnny Depp gives his character the raw edge, the off-center determination to succeed at all costs, but also poignancy. Only we never learn where his flair for ideas comes from. His dysfunctional family makes him human, but there is a dimension to his character that is missing. Is it just middle-class industriousness twisted into illegal ambition for lack of another outlet? Paul Rubens gives the movie some notoriety, but his role is not that pivotal, nor his role memorable. It is Depp, operating in his character's mystery zone, that delivers and carries the whole effort. The story is the heart of the movie, and could perhaps have been more documentary and less personalized without losing its focus: the American fairy tale
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad movie, but not a terrrific one either.
Review: The rise of a drug kingpin. From the street mary jane deals, to the 70's cocaine, and ending in prison.
Good 'nuthin else to do movie'
Plus Paul Rubens, as 'the hookup', if you can belive that!
Rating:
Summary: Great Entertainment
Review: This movie was exact to the true story and had a killer cast. Depp and Cruz were amazing and very convincing! This movie had me really pulling for Jung and heartbroken about his fate. The extra features on this DVD were wonderful and made this story even more entertaining. I loved it!
Rating:
Summary: I liked the message of the movie
Review: I got this DVD for Christmas. It's two days later, and I've already watched it three times, including the infinifilm inserts. I'm a big fan of Johnny Depp, but that's not it. I love the music, but that's not it. And I'm no big fan of cocaine. I like the movie because it does not glorify, nor does it condemn, drug use per se. In many ways it just is, and has been, for a very long time. It has a lot to do with the 'market' that exists, and that has been exploited for the money. I loved Jung's relationship with his father, as it was portrayed. His father did not understand what he was doing, but did not judge him. It was clear to me that, at least as the story was told in the movie, Jung was trying to make enough money to keep the women in his life happy, having experienced recurring abandonment by his mother over the issue of money. Drugs are, if nothing else, about money and power. Just ask anyone in the government who will tell you. I also liked the awareness I got about the drug economy in Colombia, a basically poor country without the economy of drugs. Dig a little deeper, though you won't find the information in this movie, and you will know why. My country creates these economies, and then exploits them. Why? For money and power. This is supposed to be a democracy, but nobody asked me. I would have voted against anything like that. Lots of people would, if they understood it. At a time when the cocaine explosion took off, there was a great deal of support for it. Without that support, it would not have happened. It then got corrupted, but you would have to read the book *Barry and the Boys* to see how that happened. Still and all, though, I liked the message of the movie. There is money and power in the industry, but it costs a lot more than it is worth, depending on what you value. It's a powerful movie, though perhaps not for everyone. I particularly liked the cameo appearance by Bobcat Goldthwaite. I didn't even recognize him until the third time around. He doesn't look good. But then, in the movie, he wasn't supposed to.
| 
