LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Ted Demme: George Jung
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In Ted Demme's "Blow", Demme seems to want to prove himself as a student of contemporary cinema. In opening the film with cinematic styles from the likes of past gangster master directors such as Martin Scorcese, he creates a little film that focuses itself on the life of famed cocaine dealer George Jung. Jung is played with tremendous brute force by one of today's screen legends, Johnny Depp.
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Demme's film career had a somewhat shaky start when he directed MTV personalities Ed Lover and Dr. Dre in Who's the Man? One critic called the film, "nepotism at its worst." However, he answered back in 1994 with the cult comedy hit The Ref, starring slash-and-burn comic Dennis Leary as a burglar who takes hostage of a neurotic couple. He ... created the romantic ensemble comedy Beautiful Girls and the prison comedy Life starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. In 2000, his acclaimed film Blow told the story of notorious drug trafficker George Jung and starred Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz.
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Sure, Demme is showing off, mixing film stocks and narrative techniques, drunk on the possibilities of what the medium can do. "Blow" will knock your eyes out. The bigger surprise is how powerfully it batters your heart. The script sometimes overstresses the parental parallels: Mirtha keeps George away from his daughter, just as George's mother -- humiliated by his crimes - prevents George from seeing his dying father (Liotta's performance resonates with grace notes). But Depp, never more subtly moving than when George tapes a farewell message to his dad, lays bare the misconnections that turned George's good life into a sorrowful odyssey. "Blow," ambitious, messy and bursting with feelings for which it can't always find coherent expression, is touched by greatness.
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Demme makes these drug runners into celebrated folk heroes, who are the "in" people in Hollywood and on the college campus (which, unfortunately, seems to be true to a certain extent). "Blow" suffered because it was too simplistic in its storytelling, in its nonjudgmental stance on drugs, and in shamelessly pulling the audience to the side of the nice guy drug dealer, George Jung. It doesn't even have the will of another recent drug trafficking film, "Traffic," to even spend a moment worrying about the consequences of hard drugs. For this uncritical film, the drug dealers might as well just be considered risk-taking businessmen and the rush they get is a business one. But the biggest bust about "Blow," is that it's just not a good film to get off on. If cocaine was not the subject matter, this film would be boring (and it probably wouldn't have been made).
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[T]hat's a loss Demme conveys well, directing the real-life story of legendary cocaine dealer George Jung, credited as one of the people who brought cocaine in bulk to America in the '70s, thereby setting off a widespread drug craze. "Six years ago, my friend Denis Leary gave me the book about Jung [written by Bruce Porter... titled Blow], and I went to meet him in prison. He's a very intoxicating person, very fun and very sad at once. He seemed to have so many different people within him, so many sad and amazing stories."
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Sure, Demme brings to life the true story of George Jung, who graduated from importing marijuana in the 1970s to cocaine in the ’80s. And in Johnny Depp, he provides a human a face to such a dubious criminal figure — a fairly likeable one at that. And yes, he even throws in the stunning Penelope Cruz for good measure.
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