The biography of George Jung (don't beat yourself up if you've never heard of him) is just another boring drug story: the easy, breezy path of a working-class Massachusetts white boy, not to mention montage-happy and goldie-oldies-strewn path, to $60 million as a cocaine entrepreneur, and then his swift and edifying nose dive. The factual basis of the story, always a source of courage to the timid storyteller, makes it more, not less, boring: the plodding motivational spadework of childhood flashbacks in scrubbed-raw color (the young Jung: "Are we gonna be poor? 'Cause I don't ever wanna be poor"); the remedial history lessons in first-person voice-over ("Cocaine exploded on the American culture like an atomic bomb"); the inherent rein on the imagination. But drug movies in general, whether concentrating on pushers, users, or (less constricting) cops, seem somehow to choke off imagination. The sameness of them can only be a symptom; the cause would have to be the unexamined faith in their fascination. Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Franka Potente, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths, Paul Reubens; directed by Ted Demme. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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