DEPP IS IN HIS CRIMINAL ELEMENT

(2 STARS) BLOW. (R) Whose line is it anyway: The rise and fall of the
original American cocaine tycoon, with all the music and leisure suits but
few of the casualties. With Johnny Depp, Jordi Molla, Paul Reubens,
Penelope Cruz, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths. Screenplay by David McKenna
and Nick Cassavetes, from the book by Bruce Porter. Directed by Ted Demme.
2:03 (violence, nudity, vulgarity, drug use). At area theaters.

RAY LIOTTA'S PRESENCE aside, "Blow" is a film that could hardly have
existed without "Goodfellas," and not just because both movies are
fascinated by the mechanics of crime and its influence on culture.

Both films share the same melancholic narration, the same fondness for
abrupt violence, the same Polaroid approach to sociology.

Where they differ can be summed up by their soundtracks: Martin Scorsese
had Derek and the Dominoes, Ted Demme has the Marshall Tucker Band. Need we
say more? Probably not, except to repeat the ol' chicken-egg, CD-movie
question: Which came first? Based on the real-life story of George Jung-the
Massachusetts-born chucklehead who provided the conduit for Pablo Escobar
to establish cocaine as America's drug of choice in the late '70s and early
'80s-"Blow" stars Johnny Depp in one of his characteristically adventurous
roles.

Never one to follow the conventional path of Hollywood stardom, which he
might easily have done, Depp has consistently chosen eccentric parts in
idiosyncratic films ("Dead Man," "Arizona Dream," "Before Night Falls"),
and "Blow" is no exception: Jung, bleached blond and badly dressed, is
basically an idiot, a born criminal with a criminal's vacuity.

And while being the centerpiece of any major motion picture automatically
bestows hero status on any given character, Depp does his best to keep Jung
in his place-low-rent, low-brow and low-down.

The problem with "Blow" is director Ted Demme ("Beautiful Girls," the
underrated "Life"), who's certainly not on the same page as Depp, and
scriptwriters Nick Cassavetes and David McKenna, who have rendered out of
Bruce Porter's book a screenplay of accomplished idiocy.

We hate to break it to them, but Jung is interesting only when he's dealing
drugs-first as a transplanted Californian distributing bales of marijuana,
later as the country's premier coke smuggler, making so much money he trips
over it. His personal life-marriage to the beautiful but venomous Mirtha
(Penelope Cruz), his relationship with his parents (Liotta and Rachel
Griffiths) and his young daughter (Emma Roberts) -are of limited interest,
largely because of the maudlin way Demme handles it, but also because amid
all our presumed sympathy for Jung, there's never any recognition of the
swath of tragedy cut through this country by cocaine, Jung or his ilk.

Depp aside, the acting is almost uniformly atrocious-although it's hard to
make hay out of this dialogue.

Griffiths seems to have decided to take up residency on another planet
entirely, playing Jung's mother Ermine as a combination Nurse Ratched/Ming
the Merciless with a Boston accent that could grind glass.

She's funny, if incongruous. Best among the supporting cast is probably
Paul Reubens (the erstwhile Pee Wee Herman) as Jung's partner Derek, who
plays his part very matter-of-factly, and refreshingly so.

You walk away from "Blow" feeling that the crime film-as-cultural autopsy
has been done to death-"Scarface," "Goodfellas" and "Boogie Nights," to
name just a few movies to which "Blow" is in debt. But there was room for
this, if only Demme had known how to balance his material.

What is the point of the prelude-Jung's move from Massachusetts to
California, his entree into pot dealing, and his love affair with the
doomed Barbie (Franka Potente of "Run Lola Run") -especially since it eats
up as much film as Jung's time amid the Medellin Cartel? Why not find the
crest of the narrative somewhere amid Jung's numerous busts, rather than
prolonging the movie into his less-than-fascinating prison life? At the
risk of being redundant, we don't really care about Jung. We care about the
very reasons he's expendable. Deals are often made in getting a real
person's story on screen, but making George Jung into a person was too high
a price for "Blow."