'BLOW' CAN'T TOP 'TRAFFIC'

Even if it didn't have the dubious timing of following on the heels of the
sweeping and much praised "Traffic," "Blow," I think, still would come off
as a lightweight in the drug-movie pantheon.

Maybe, in all fairness, that's because "Blow," the story of real-life
marijuana/cocaine tycoon George Yung, isn't actually that much about drugs
per se. It's much more about the business of drugs - how they are
manufactured, transported, distributed and sold, and how the men who deal
in them can earn fortunes before, inevitably, turning on one another.

Set primarily in the late 1960s and early '70s, the film has a definite
period look and feel to it, right down to its casual, sometimes slap-dash
style. "Blow" rolls out just about every '60s trope except Val Kilmer
reopening the Door to Jim Morrison.

Narrated in retro-chronology by its protagonist Yung (at first, a
middle-aged Johnny Depp), "Blow" opens with a few life-reflective words
from behind prison bars before shifting to a pastel-kissed, seemingly
idyllic '50s New England environment. There little George Yung is fawned
over by his hardworking father (Ray Liotta) and constantly chastised by his
moody, erratic mother (Rachel Griffiths). The movie spends an inordinate
amount of time on Yung's childhood and his relationship with his parents,
trying too hard to show how a "normal" kid might grow up to be a drug czar
(however, if nothing else, it's good to see Liotta, after "Hannibal," with
his head screwed back on.)

"Blow" suggests that George is transformed profoundly by seeing his
father's plumbing business go bankrupt, solemnly vowing never to be poor,
even if that means not doing an honest day's work in his life and breaking
many federal laws.

George drifts to Manhattan Beach, Fla., in '68, "the summer of love," and
this sheltered kid from winter-whipped Boston has never seen anything like
it: the sun, the ocean, the available women, the marijuana. It's Brian
Wilson meets "California Dreamin'" meets Cheech and Chong. With predictable
'60s anthems ringing and kids dancing in bikinis on the beach, "Blow" for
awhile looks like Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon Get Stoned on the Beach.

George, who blends a dreamy, boyish quality with a few-questions-asked
amorality, becomes friends with a major marijuana distributor and
hairdresser Derek (the excellent Paul Reubens), and a fun-loving stewardess
named Barbara (Franka Potente) who can use her job to shuffle marijuana
from city to city.

It's high times for a while, until a little of Mom's tough love catches up
with Yung. He ends up in prison, no land of "Oz," but a crime school where
Yung hears the one word that will forever change his life - for good, for
bad and for the complete cycle: cocaine.

Before we have time to say "snow king," Yung is shuffling through the
portals of big-time drugland like a man wearing the glow of an invisible
shield. From the California beaches, he lands in Colombia playing hardball
with Pablo Escobar, "the king" of drugs, whose wrath he witnesses in the
point-blank shooting execution of an informant, one of the movie's few
violent moments.

Depp plays Young with a passively glazed look of confident concentration
and haircuts that go from Herman's Hermits to Rod Stewart. George has
everything going his way, right up to the bonanza moment when cocaine
explodes onto the Hollywood scene, "accepted by actors and musicians."

Soon - and in one of the movie's quaintly humorous scenes - Yung and his
ersatz partners have made so much money they literally have no more room in
which to store it.

If "Blow" seems ambivalent about its central figure (you almost have to
admire Yung's sheer moxie, even as he feeds a drug epidemic that is hooking
and killing people), then it is positively neutral about the subject at its
core. The cocaine bull market leads to fabulous cars, mansions, access to
celebrities, beautiful people snorting at pool parties. Perhaps sensing
that enough movies have been made about the horrors of drugs, "Blow"
focuses on its spoils.

Depp does nothing to disavow his reputation as a commanding, though elusive
screen presence. With the look of a deferential, neo-androgynous rock star,
George Yung possesses the guile of a man clever and wispy enough to slither
through these dangerous mine fields, while seeming barely tough enough for
the profession. At virtually every personal crossroads, where does George
Yung seek refuge? Back home with Mom and Dad.

This is, however, a rags to riches and back to rags movie, so the rise is
more interesting than the fall. "Blow" loses its momentum and zest when
George falls in love with and marries the regal and wealthy Colombian siren
Mirtha, in a disappointing, largely shrill performance by Penelope Cruz in
her first naughty role. Mirtha does manage to provide George with the one
great love of his life - a daughter - but the movie way overplays the
domestic trauma, as well as the contradiction of a dope magnate as doting dad.

Ultimately, "Blow" leaves us in the position of George's parents, the
father appalled by his son's pursuits, yet for a time in awe of his
material accumulation and, if nothing else, the loyal and loving father.
His mother, understandably intolerant and ashamed, is left to pretend
George no longer exists.

"Blow" is redolent with '60s expressions, the attitudes, sunglasses, the
crazy clothes that make everybody look like Sonny and Cher. Yet even when
buoyed by the hypnotic Johnny Depp, it manages to feel underwhelming and
not especially involving. What is it about cocaine that can generate
unimaginable wealth? That's not this movie's purpose.

As it turns out, "Blow" is a lot more interesting when it demonstrates how
dope manages to get from the tropical fields of South America to the
kitchen tables and dining rooms of the United States.