Pubdate: Fri, 06 Apr 2001
Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)
Copyright: 2001 The Register-Guard
Contact:  http://www.registerguard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/362
Author: Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

DRUG KINGPIN'S TALE FALLS FLAT

"Blow" stars Johnny Depp in a biopic about George Jung, a man who claims 
that in the late 1970s he imported about 85 percent of all the cocaine in 
America. That made him the greatest success story in drugs, an industry 
that has inspired more movies than any other.

So why is he such a sad sack. Why is his life so monotonous and 
disappointing. That's what he'd like to know. The last shot in the film 
shows the real George Jung staring out at us from the screen like a man 
buried alive in his own regrets.

The story begins in a haze of California dreamin' for George, who escapes 
West from an uninspiring Massachusetts childhood, a relentless mother 
(Rachel Griffiths) and a father (Ray Liotta) who doesn't want to deal with 
bad news about his son.

In the Los Angeles environs of Manhattan Beach, George smokes pot, throws 
Frisbees, meets stewardesses and engages in boozy plans with his friend 
Tuna (Ethan Suplee), who asks him, "You know how we were wondering how we 
were gonna get money being that we don't want to get jobs." The brainstorm: 
Import marijuana from Mexico in the customs-free luggage of their 
stewardess pals and sell it to eager students at Eastern colleges. This is 
a business plan waiting to be born, and soon George is wealthy, although 
not beyond his wildest imaginings.

His first love is a stewardess named Barbara (Franka Potente, from "Run, 
Lola, Run") and it's fun, fun, fun, and her daddy never takes her T-Bird away.

These opening chapters in the life of George Jung tell a story of small 
risk and great joy, especially if your idea of a good time is having all 
the money you can possibly spend and hopelessly conventional ideas about 
how to spend it. How big a house can you live in. How many drugs can you 
consume.

George never actually planned to become a drug dealer and is a little 
bemused at his good luck. Even a 1972 bust in Chicago seems like a minor 
bump in the road (speaking in his own defense, he tells the judge, "It 
ain't me, babe").

Back on the streets, George finds clouds obscuring the California sun. 
Barbara dies unexpectedly (that is, not because of drugs), and his success 
attracts the interest of a better class of narcotics cop. He becomes a 
fugitive, and it is his own mother who rats on him with the cops, even 
while his father is beaming at what might seem to be his success.

In Danbury Prison, he tells us, "I went in with a bachelor's of marijuana 
and came out with a doctorate in cocaine." As the 1970s roll on, the 
innocence of pot has been replaced by the urgency of cocaine.

Soon, George is making real money as a key distributor for his new friend 
Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis) and the Medellin drug cartel of Colombia. It's 
with their cocaine that he racks up his record market share.

And there is a new woman, Mirtha (Penelope Cruz), sexy as hell, but a real 
piece of work in the deportment department. At one point she gets him 
arrested by throwing a tantrum in their car.

The Colombians, of course, are heavy hitters, and George tries to protect 
his position by concealing the identity of his key California middleman, a 
onetime hairdresser named Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens).

But the Colombians want to know that name really bad, and meanwhile George 
might be asking, is a rich man under the shadow of sudden death measurably 
happier than a man with a more mundane but serene existence.

This is not, alas, a question that occurs to George Jung. Indeed, not many 
questions occur to him that are not directly related to getting, spending 
and sleeping with.

The later chapters of his life grow increasingly depressing. He was never 
an interesting person, never had thoughts worth sharing or words worth 
remembering, but at least he represented a colorful type in his early 
years: the kid who smokes a little weed, finds a source, starts to sell, 
and finds himself with a brand-new pair of roller skates.

By his middle years, George is essentially just the guy the Colombians want 
to replace and the feds want to arrest. No fun.

The dreary story of his final defeats is a record of back-stabbing and 
broken trusts, and although there is a certain poignancy in his final 
destiny, it is tempered by our knowledge that millions of lives had to be 
destroyed by addiction so that George and his onetime friends could arrive 
at their crossroads.

That's the thing about George. He thinks it's all about him. His life, his 
story, his success, his fortune, his lost fortune, his good luck, his bad 
luck. Actually, all he did was operate a tollgate between suppliers and 
addicts. You wonder, but you never find out, if the reality of those 
destroyed lives ever occurred to him.

The movie, directed by Ted Demme and written by David McKenna and Nick 
Cassavetes (from an as-told-to book by Bruce Porter), is well made and well 
acted. As a story of the rise and fall of this man, it serves. Johnny Depp 
is a versatile and reliable actor who almost always chooses interesting 
projects.

The failure is George Jung's. For all the glory of his success and the 
pathos of his failure, he never became a person interesting enough to make 
a movie about.

The appearance of Ray Liotta here reminds us of Scorsese's "Good Fellas," 
which took a much less important criminal and made him an immeasurably more 
interesting character. And of course Al Pacino's "Scarface" has so much 
style he makes George Jung look like a dry goods clerk.

Which essentially he was. Take away the drugs, and this is the story of a 
boring life in wholesale. 
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom