ODYSSEY LEAVES YOU WIRED

Akerlund's Crystal-Meth Meditation Is Probably Greatest Drug Movie
Since Last Great Drug Movie

Jonas Akerlund's Spun is probably the greatest drug movie since the
last great drug movie.

If you can remember what the last great drug movie was, you are in no
position to pass judgement on the speed freaks pinwheeling through the
blasted desert landscape of the Northern Los Angeles Valley, where
this crystal-meth meditation is set.

Akerlund is a 34-year-old Swedish ad biz whiz and MTV Video
award-winning director of Madonna's Ray of Light, and Spun represents
the star-laden sum of his work in high-voltage, nano-edit,
attention-grabbing cinema.

Like Requiem for a Dream before it (OK, probably the last great drug
movie) it crawls inside the actual rush of dope to the brain with
fist-clenching explosions of sound, light and adrenaline. The people
in Akerlund's mordantly funny, suicidally bleak slapstick riff are
wired - or spun, in the meth-head vernacular. The movie is wired - or
spun. And you'll be truly wired by the time it reaches its anarchic
conclusion.

Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore) is Ross, a college drop-out with a nose
for speed whose sleepless three-day odyssey down all the circles of
amphetamine hell begins innocently enough when he knocks on the
rathole door of a local dealer named Spider Mike, played with fearless
abandon by the great John Leguizamo (Moulin Rouge). All Ross wants is
a little dope, which Spider Mike can't seem to locate at the moment,
which is not surprising considering the bombed out state of his crib.

After lots of shouting, illogic and tidal waves of paranoia, Ross
agrees to drive a Vegas stripper named Nikki (Brittany Murphy, of 8
Mile) to her boyfriend's motel-room meth lab. That leaves Spider,
Spider's skanky girlfriend Cookie (Mena Suvari, playing night to her
day in American Beauty), and pizza-faced, synapse-challenged little
buddy Frisbee ( Patrick Fugit, of Almost Famous) to their own
destructive devices, God help them.

Nikki's b.f. is The Cook, played with a brilliant cocktail of
over-the-top restraint by now-redeemed Hollywood outlaw Mickey Rourke.
The Cook cooks up meth for local consumption, a process that involves
highly combustible chemicals and fumes that turn Nikki's little dog
green. The end result is, however, crystal meth, and lots of it, so
Ross agrees to chauffeur Nikki and The Cook around and act as general
gofer in exchange for as much crank as he can tolerate.

So begins an epic road movie written in mostly miniature journeys
between hotel rooms, crash pads, police stations and convenience
stores. One running gag features a stripper (good sport Chloe Hunter)
Ross has left naked, hogtied - and forgotten - in a room he rents from
snoopy diesel-dyke landlord Debbie Harry.

Another involves speed-sniffing TV cops Peter Stormare and Alexis
Arquette and a series of clumsy busts rigged for their popular reality
show. A third laughs at some poor Latino pimp getting clobbered by
six-packs wielded by vengeful customers in a 7-Eleven.

All of this is set to lovely music by ex-Smashing Pumpkin Billy
Corgan, shot in an agile variety of mind-frying formats by Akerlund
cinematographer Eric Broms, and exhaustively sewn together from over
200,000 feet of high speed 16-mm stock during 20-hour nights in
Akerlund's Swedish home studio.

The genesis of the film came from a chance meeting between writer
Creighton Vero and local speed freak William De Los Santos outside a
Portland, Ore., bar. The resulting collaboration led to a script and a
1,000-page story-board that Akerlund reportedly suggested the cast
ignore if either was getting in the way of their characters.

The result is performances wrenched from the outer limits of emotional
tolerance, but with tongues planted firmly in chewed-up cheeks. The
acting is awesome across the board, with special mention made to
Rourke because he has been in the commercial wilderness for so long.
There are cameos - by Corgan, Rob Halford and Eric Roberts (another
mad wilderness roamer), and an overall air of such complete technical
control that anything can be allowed to happen, and does.

Spun is possibly the raunchiest movie since Trainspotting, with which
it shares a delicate bathroom moment. I saw it during a 10 a.m. Monday
press screening and was not amused by the spiritually exhausted tone
it set for the rest of the day. Now I see Spun for what it is - the
greatest drug movie since the last great drug movie.

Spun

Rating 4

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, John Leguizamo, Brittany Murphy, Mickey Rourke

Playing at: Cinema du Parc.

Parents' guide: Everything bad - sex, drugs, nudity, violence,
language.