'BLOW': UNDER THE INFLUENCE, A DRUG DEALER GETS HIS DUE

Johnny Depp has the kind of face that justifies the existence of cinema.
You would have to go back to the young Montgomery Clift, or perhaps to
Greta Garbo herself, to find facial bone structure so perfectly suited to
the shimmering sublimity of the screen. Yes, Mr. Depp is a gifted actor,
but his talent for dramatic understatement is sometimes overwhelmed by his
sheer charisma. Though he makes even dull films watchable — you can't take
your eyes off him — his enigmatic reserve can make everyone else look like
a shameless ham.

When he's paired with a first-class Actors Studio emoter like Al Pacino (in
Mike Newell's "Donnie Brasco") or Marlon Brando (in Jeremy Leven's "Don
Juan DeMarco") the effect can be electrifying. But when, in Ted Demme's new
film "Blow," he stands by as Penelope Cruz throws a coked-out hissy fit,
you feel a little embarrassed for both of them.

Mr. Depp's sorrowful countenance is the still point at the center of
"Blow's" swirling hyperactivity, and his witty, spare performance gives the
picture a poignancy — a depth of feeling, if you'll allow the pun — that
Mr. Demme's hectic direction and the hurried script by David McKenna and
Nick Cassavetes don't quite earn. Mr. Depp plays George Jung, a real-life
drug dealer now serving a long sentence in a federal prison, whose aged,
haunted face comes onscreen at the end of the picture. (In the sad final
scenes, Mr. Depp's prettiness is submerged in prosthetic jowls and
painted-on liver spots.) Though it ends on a bleak note of betrayal and
defeat, "Blow" is neither a tragedy nor a morality play, but rather a
jaunty, candy-colored romp through a quarter century or so of American pop
music, pop fashion and popular illegal substances.

The early scenes — shot in the grainy, faded tones that signify the pinched
old days before everything was groovy — show George's working-class
childhood in Weymouth, Mass. Witnessing his parents' endless squabbles over
money and his father's humiliating bankruptcy, George — pronounced "Jawdge"
in Mr. Depp's fastidious regional dialect — resolves never to be like them
and flees to Manhattan Beach, Calif., a town populated entirely by airline
stewardesses. (The year is 1968, so they are not yet flight attendants and
not yet emancipated from Playboyesque stereotyping.)

George and his pal Tuna (Ethan Suplee) hook up with a local hairdresser
(Paul Ruebens, avidly dusting off another period stereotype, the flamboyant
gay coiffeur), who also happens to be the town's main pot supplier. Before
long the enterprising George, using his stewardess girlfriend Barbara
(Franka Potente) as a courier, is running a lucrative transcontinental
dealership.

When demand outruns supply, he cuts out the middleman and heads for Mexico,
where, after some initial suspicion of a gringo going around asking, "Donde
esta el pot?" the local growers are amazed at how quickly he can move their
product.

But after a brief spell of blissed-out hedonism, George's luck turns sour.
As soon as his voice-over proclaims that "everything was perfect," Mr.
Demme cuts to a dark interior, and George's parents (Ray Liotta and Rachel
Griffiths) show up to accentuate the negative. Barbara becomes ill, and
George is busted after his pursed-lipped mother (maybe it's the accent,
which Ms. Griffiths struggles with) rats him out. "It's for your own good,"
she says, which turns out to be true. In prison, her son meets an
ingratiating Colombian named Diego (Jordi Molla), who introduces him to the
lucrative and dangerous world of the nascent cocaine cartels.

The recent trend in movies about drugs — exemplified by "Traffic" and
"Requiem for a Dream" — is toward a solemn reckoning of their social and
psychological costs. "Blow," with its jaunty visual style,
short-attention-span editing, and outlaw-entrepreneur story line, takes a
considerably lighter view. If the earnest, ambiguous "Traffic" worried
about the insatiable American hunger for illegal pleasures, the breezily
nonjudgmental "Blow" celebrates this appetite and makes those who exploit
it into hip folk heroes.

Pundits will no doubt scowl that the movie tolerates — or even glorifies —
the use of marijuana and cocaine, but to raise such an objection is to miss
the point. "Blow" is only superficially about drugs. Like most American
vice epics, from "The Godfather" to rap videos, it's really about money and
the fabulous set and costume design opportunities it can buy. On two
different occasions, and in two different languages, "Blow" has characters
utter the oft-repeated movie-gangster creed, "It's nothing personal, just
business."

The main problem with "Blow" is that it swings ambivalently between these
two poles, breezing through George's rags-to-riches chronicle with such
light-handed exuberance that it never establishes the emotional density
that would make its sad final act work. George's marriage to a cartel
princess named Mirtha (Ms. Cruz) never generates the on-screen heat
(despite a swirling, fancily edited montage of their first encounter) that
would explain its ultimate combustion.

Mr. Demme's storytelling is quick and engaging, but also a bit lazy: the
clothes and Mr. Depp's inscrutable countenance do much of the work. The
outfits, haircuts and sunglasses, it must be said, are as dazzling and
evocative as the soundtrack, which opens with the Rolling Stones' "Can You
Hear Me Knocking" and includes thematically appropriate cuts by Lynyrd
Skynyrd, Bob Dylan, and K. C. and the Sunshine Band. But the extravagant
precision of George's wardrobe — from wraparound shades to aviator frames,
from turtleneck sweaters to Members Only jackets — amounts to a stylistic
shorthand that substitutes for historical insight rather than contributing
to it.

"Blow" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult
guardian). It has profanity, a few scenes of violence and many scenes of
drug use.

BLOW

Directed by Ted Demme; written by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes;
director of photography, Ellen Kuras; edited by Kevin Tent; production
designer, Michael Hanan; produced by Mr. Demme, Joel Stillerman and Denis
Leary; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 119 minutes. This film is
rated R.

WITH: Johnny Depp (George Jung), Penelope Cruz (Mirtha), Jordi Molla
(Diego), Franka Potente (Barbara), Rachel Griffiths (Ermine Jung), Ray
Liotta (Fred Jung), Ethan Suplee (Tuna), Paul Reubens (Derek Foreal) and
Max Perlich (Kevin Dulli).