Blow.(Review)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 26-MAY-01

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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

Blow (18, selected cinemas)

For those few Spectator readers not reading this column under the influences of narcotics, `blow' is a synonym for `cocaine'. In a similar vein, or even a similar nose, Ted Demme's Blow wants to be a synonym for Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. In charting the true-ish story of the rise and fall of drug dealer George Jung, from stifling suburbia in the Fifties to disco daze in the Seventies to the correctional facility in which he presently languishes, Demme follows Scorsese's structure like an instruction manual: start with a snippet of the end of the story before jumping back to childhood and then forward through the decades with freeze-frames and montages but also lots of pop songs and haircuts to let you know where you are, until eventually you work your way back to the scene you got a peek of at the beginning.

Blow even has Ray Liotta, who in Goodfellas played the part of the eager young kid looking to break into the...

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