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Blow | Tony Amendola, Penélope Cruz | Arrogance and betrayal
 
 


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 Blow  

Blow
Tony Amendola, Penélope Cruz

New Line Home Video, 2001

average customer review:based on 226 reviews
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     highly recommended  highly recommended



A briskly paced hybrid of Boogie Nights and Goodfellas, Blow chronicles the three-decade rise and fall of George Jung (Johnny Depp), a normal American kid who makes a personal vow against poverty, builds a marijuana empire in the '60s, multiplies his fortune with the Colombian Medellín cocaine cartel, and blows it all with a series of police busts culminating in one final, long-term jail sentence. "Your dad's a loser," says this absentee father to his estranged but beloved daughter, and he's right: Blow is the story of a nice guy who made wrong choices all his life, almost single-handedly created the American cocaine trade, and got exactly what he deserved. As directed by Ted Demme, the film is vibrantly entertaining, painstakingly authentic... and utterly aimless in terms of overall purpose.

We can't sympathize with Jung's meteoric rise to wealth and the wild life, and Demme isn't suggesting that we should idolize a drug dealer. So what, exactly, is the point of Blow? Simply, it seems, to present Jung's story as the epitome of the coke-driven glory days, and to suggest, ever so subtly, that Jung isn't such a bad guy, after all. Anyone curious about his lifestyle will find this film amazing, and there's plenty of humor mixed with the constant threat of violence and paranoid anxiety. Demme has also populated the film with a fantastic supporting cast (although Penélope Cruz grows tiresome as Jung's hedonistic wife), and this is certainly a compelling look at the other side of Traffic. Still, one wishes that Blow had a more viable reason for being; like a wild party, it leaves you with a hangover and a vague feeling of regret. --Jeff Shannon


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Blow - Blu-ray Info

Version: U.S.A / Region A, B, C
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
VC-1 BD-50
Running time: 2:03:26
Movie size: 25,12 GB
Disc size: 46,01 GB
Average video bit rate: 22.07 Mbps

Dolby TrueHD Audio English 1474 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 16-bit / 1474kbps (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps

Subtitles: English / English SDH

Number of chapters: 25

#Focus points
#Commentary by director
#Deleted scenes
#Character Outtakes
#Ted Demme's Production Diary
#Nikki Costa Push and Pull Music Video
#George Jung Interviews by director
#Lost Paradise: Cocaine's impact on Colombia addiction: Body and Soul
#Fact Track: Trivia subtitle track with direct access to additional features
#Theatrical trailers


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Arrogance and betrayal

This film takes a great pleasure in depicting a mediocre criminal, a drug dealer actually, who considers himself a hero, a genius and maybe even a god on earth. His initial success he analyzes as his own and does not see it is the success of a system and when he fails it's because he crossed a line somewhere: too much and too sure of himself maybe even arrogant and condescending. Then his story is a story of successive failures in between short periods of success and long periods of prison as a result of it all. He ends up betrayed by his own partners who deliver him to the FBI and DEA one night in order to get themselves out of the business clean and unharmed. Finks, that's what his friends were. But he deserved it. Then the story seems to support him on the other side of the coin: his daughter. He loses his wife and his daughter in order to go and by going to prison a first time. Then he re-conquers his daughter little by little and he promises to take her away from the squalor her mother is providing. But that's when he decides to do one more trick to get the money he needs to kidnap his own daughter. That's when he is picked up, lower than him you cannot fall, by the police and sent to prison for so long that he will never see his father alive again. So he dreams his daughter comes and visits him. But that's a dream, an illusion, a mirage. He was not able to deliver his promise and he has been discarded like an old shoe or a worn out sock. Sad but after all very moralistic. Crime does not pay and only brings deception, disappointment and suffering. Too moral maybe to be as good as it could have been. How can we support or sympathize with this selfish and arrogant p**** of a man?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines



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One of my favorites

The movie is one of my favorites but in the bonus features I would have liked to hear more of George Jung's thoughts and stories.


a glossy snow story

THe acting on this movie is great. But as with any biography
the truth often gets far behind. A large number of people around the REAL
coke dealer met unfortunate ends probably at the dope dealers orders or his accomplishes. You can't be in the hard drug dealing world without
deadly violence.
But we don't see any of this. In fact a early character is said just to vanish. Yes. well most likely jung had him killed. When the late coke addict director of this movie ( he died overdosing on coke) wanted to tell Jungs story he presented a much kinder version of reality than existed. A true bloody tale would have been more accurate and entertaining but director instead tells us a version of drug dealing that is like a fairy tale in some ways. That's nothing new for hollywood.
Many biographies are so whitewashed that the real person would be amazed that this person on screen is supposed to be him!. The reality though is that coke and it's children have laid waste to millions of lives and to make a movie that doesn't show this destruction is rather strange. But then the director was a coke addict. he's dead and long after the real jung is dead the damage he did to the world will be with us.


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worth watching once, I suppose

Drug movies tend to bore me, and this one was no exception. I wasn't too into the narrative style, and Penelope Cruz put forth one of her worst performance to date, in my book, but let me clarify by saying I adore Penelope. Johnny Depp was good for the role, but someone else might have been able to bring more to the character.


reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10



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