Blow

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * )

Blow? It rages, a hurricane ripping through 30 years of American pop culture: the 60s innocence, the 70s decadence and the sad awakening of the 80s. In the eye of the storm is Johnny Depp as George Jung, the man who claims to have made cocaine into a fashion accessory: the 60s hippie, the 70s drug lord and the wasted (physically and emotionally) casualty of the 80s. Rub out the next two decades, Jung is in jail until 2014.

When Jung left his middle-class parents' Massachusetts home in the 60s, he wanted to go California dreamin' and leave behind overbearing mum Ermine (Rachel Griffiths) and indulgent dad Fred (Ray Liotta). Picking up a stewardess girlfriend, Barbara (Franka Potente), gave Jung and his college pals the route to import grass from Mexico. That earned him $100,000 a year so he widened his business interests.

Soon he's introduced to the cocaine cartels run by the chilling Paolo Escobar (our own Cliff Curtis) out of Medellin, Colombia. With the help of Californian hairdresser Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens, the artist formerly known as Peewee Herman) Jung is soon getting up the nose of Hollywood's elite. He claims to be responsible for 85 per cent of the cocaine traffic in America. He is involved with a new woman, Mirtha (Penelope Cruz).

Because of the subject matter, you know this must end with sell-outs and backstabbing. You know, because this is a Hollywood movie and the finger is pointed rather too obviously at certain heavyweights in that town, that Jung must seek some kind of redemption. With a weary, dreary dignity, knowing that millions of lives were destroyed so Jung could get there, Depp denies him even that.

Sad, too, that this was director Ted Demme's breakthrough movie. He died just a few months after making it. It is a fine epitaph to his talent.

• DVD features: movie (124min); behind-the-scenes feature; Ted Demme interviews George Jung in prison; Lost Paradise — Cocaine's Impact on Columbia documentary; Addiction — Body and Soul, scientists, doctors talk about addiction; deleted scenes; interviews with characters talking about Jung; music video, Nikka Costa's Push and Pull; theatrical teaser and full trailer.