BEFORE: Popeye Doyle might have cleaned out his system and got the monkey off his back, but around here, we're just getting started...
THE PLOT: The story of George Jung, the man who established the American cocaine market in the 1970's.
AFTER: A couple of negatives, but mostly positive things to say. I couldn't help notice the connections to "Goodfellas" - I guess any film about someone building up a criminal empire is going to be reminiscent of Scorcese's masterpiece, but it feels like not much new ground was broken here. The presence of Ray Liotta (last seen in "Observe and Report") as Jung's father only heightened the similarities.
The soundtrack was good, but I found the choices rather predictable, with songs like "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'", "Blinded By the Light", "Strange Brew" and "That Smell". They're great songs, but I feel like I've heard them each in a dozen other movies. Props for including "Can't You See" by the Marshall Tucker Band, though, which could be one of the best songs in the history of ever.
Johnny Depp (last seen in "Public Enemies") seemed very subdued here, almost sleepwalking through the film, which is neither here nor there, I guess it's just a choice. But his Boston accent was solid, and not every actor gets that right. Not every actor in this film got it right. I should say "Weymouth" accent, as there are different Boston-area accents - someone from, say, South Boston wouldn't have the same exact accent as someone from Revere. (Rev-EY-ah!) It's a lot like the different classes of English accent in that way. And since Jung started in Weymouth and then spent time in California, then Mexico, this presented a unique linguistic challenge, which I believe Depp met.
It's another Hollywood fallacy, I believe, that the people who run these criminal drug empires are all raging cokeheads themselves. How are we supposed to believe that someone maintains the technical savvy to run a complex smuggling operation if they're constantly stoned off their nut? The extreme, of course, is Al Pacino in "Scarface", knocking over piles of cocaine in his mansion, and swimming through it like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin. That empire would crumble in a week if its kingpin was blasted 24/7...
What's different about this film is that it shows Jung as someone who occasionally smoked pot and snorted coke - but after an incident where his blood contains more cocaine than actual hemoglobin, he gets himself clean and (presumably) stays that way. Whatever you do for a living, you probably need some time away from it on a daily basis, to keep from going crackers. If you're a puppeteer 9 to 5, on the weekend probably the last thing you want to do is go to a puppet show. Then there's the old joke about the gynecologist...
So, I appreciated the depiction of Jung as a businessman first, and occasional stoner second. However, some of the other characters were so ridiculous as to be almost cartoonish, like Mirtha (Penelope Cruz, last seen in "Sahara") and George's mother (Rachel Griffiths, last seen in "The Rookie", the baseball one). Paul Reubens (aka Pee-Wee Herman) walked the line and fared very well, I think, playing a bisexual hairdresser who becomes a major drug dealer.
Also starring Ethan Suplee (last seen in "The Fountain"), Cliff Curtis (last seen in "Live Free or Die Hard") as Pablo Escobar, Miguel Sandoval (last seen in "Get Shorty", where he played a character named Escobar), Max Perlich, and Kevin Gage (last seen in "Heat") with cameos from Bobcat Goldthwait, Emma Roberts, and Jaime King.
Rating: 7 out of 10 suitcases
I know that resemblance between actors playing family members isn't the most important thing in a film, but Ray Liotta as Johnny Depp's father??? I can't get my mind around that one, even with dark-haired and -eyed Rachel Griffiths playing his mother.
ReplyDelete...which supports the theory that Ray Liotta was cast largely to make a connection to "Goodfellas" - I mean, this film was good, but not "Goodfellas" good.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing is, Depp's character had blond or blondish hair for most of the film. Maybe it was implied that his character dyed it blond, or maybe it became blond after spending time in the California sun, but you're right, there wasn't much of a physical resemblance between Depp and the actors cast as his parents.