Blow (2001)

The story of George Jung, the man who established the American cocaine market in the 1970s.

Director:

Ted Demme

Writers:

Bruce Porter (book), David McKenna (screenplay),

Stars:

Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Franka Potente

1 win & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Johnny Depp	...	George Jung
Penélope Cruz	...	Mirtha Jung (as Penelope Cruz)
Franka Potente	...	Barbara Buckley
Rachel Griffiths	...	Ermine Jung
Paul Reubens	...	Derek Foreal
Jordi Mollà	...	Diego Delgado (as Jordi Molla)
Cliff Curtis	...	Pablo Escobar
Miguel Sandoval	...	Augusto Oliveras
Ethan Suplee	...	Tuna
Ray Liotta	...	Fred Jung
Kevin Gage	...	Leon Minghella
Max Perlich	...	Kevin Dulli
Jesse James	...	Young George
Miguel Pérez	...	Alessandro (as Miguel Perez)
Dan Ferro	...	Cesar Toban

Storyline

A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950's. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George's father cannot make a living and the family goes bankrupt. George does not want the same thing to happen to him, and his friend Tuna, in the 1960's, suggests that he deal marijuana. He is a big hit in California in the 1960's, yet he goes to jail, where he finds out about the wonders of cocaine. As a result, when released, he gets rich by bringing cocaine to America. However, he soon pays the price.

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Plot Keywords:

cocaine | 1970s | california | 1960s | prison | 

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Taglines:

Based on a True Story.

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Genres:

Biography | Crime | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for pervasive drug content and language, some violence and sexuality

Details

Official Sites:

New Line Cinema

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 April 2001 (USA)

Also Known As:

Profissão de Risco

Filming Locations:

Spring Street Towers - 650 S. Spring Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$30,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$30,807 (Finland) (10 August 2001)

Gross:

$8,844,782 (Europe) (10 August 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Apostle, Avery Pix, New Line Cinema

Technical Specs

Runtime:

124 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Rachel Griffiths plays Ermine Jung (George's mother). The actress is five years younger than Johnny Depp (George).

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Goofs

The "Miami Beach hotel" scene opens with a shot showing the outside of the hotel. Among the visible newspaper boxes is one for the Long Beach newspaper and with 1990s style graphics.

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Quotes

[first lines]
George: That's a nice boy. Go get 'em, Dulli.

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Crazy Credits

A photograph of the real George Jung appears at the end of the film, as the credits start to roll.

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Connections

Referenced in Brows Held High: A Serbian Film (2011)

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Soundtracks

"Sort Of Soul"
Written by Keith Roberts
Performed by Birds & Brass
Courtesy of AEI Redifusion Music
Published by Rimusic

User Reviews

Unreliable Memoir...

There's something relentlessly self-serving about the (auto)biographies of criminals. There are too many plays for sympathy; a certain neatness in the way events always seem to absolve the criminal of blame; a sense of something being laid on a little too thick. So it is with 'Blow'.

George Jung, as played by Johnny Depp, is a perpetual ingenue. His character is a catalogue of good looks and sweet gestures, and he has a downright saintliness in his dealings with others that's so slick and saccharine that one can see the con coming from miles away. George is kind to his friends, generous to his business partners, oddly enough always the victim and never the perpetrator of double crossings, and by God, he loves his daughter. I was disappointed that there were no scenes of Johnny Depp administering aid to wounded animals, but it's possible that these were cut to allow the film to run its current six hours in length.

While there's a certain low humour in watching film-makers unknowingly playing the role of patsies, the warped and jagged caricatures Jung's narrative makes of the other people in his story (the better to portray him as Christ) soon nip any fun in the bud. George's mother (Rachel Griffiths, utterly wasted) is a cold, insatiate bitch; his wife (Penelope Cruz, hysterical) is a coke-mad, tantrum throwing ingrate, and his West Coast distributor (Paul Reubens, the less said the better) is a limp wristed fairy (largely, I suspect, so as not to threaten George's position as the film's only sympathetic, attractive, non-ethnic heterosexual male). It's notable that the only female close to Jung who gets anything like a good rap is his flower-child stewardess fiancee Barbara, who rather conveniently drops dead before her relations with him have a chance to sour.

While it's not exactly unentertaining - the film's early-mid section works well as an evocation of sunlit good times - 'Blow's' inherent manipulativeness is never far beneath the surface. Once things go bad for Jung, the film starts to sag in sympathy (literally) with him, and becomes instead a chronicle of Bad and Unjust Things Suffered with Commendable Stoicism by George Jung. My advice would be to have already left the theatre by this point. The ending is painfully overblown and drawn out, and we are forced to endure one of the more 'off' moments in recent cinema as the film primly castigates Jung's daughter for not visiting her father in jail. I'm sure she has her reasons.