Blow (2001)

Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again. But life goes on. This week we're going deep on Blow (2001) — Ted Demme's visceral, emotionally devastating, criminally underappreciated biographical crime drama that tells the true story of George Jung — the Massachusetts kid who accidentally helped establish the American cocaine market in the 1970s, built a $100 million empire with the Medellín Cartel, and lost absolutely everything, including the one person he loved most. This is not a film about drugs. It's a film about fathers and daughters. And it will hit you like a freight train if you let it.Directed by Ted Demme and adapted from Bruce Porter's 1993 book by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes, the film follows George Jung (Johnny Depp) from his working-class childhood in Weymouth, Massachusetts — where watching his father Fred (Ray Liotta) work himself to the bone and still go bankrupt plants a seed of ambition that will eventually grow into something monstrous — through his rise from small-time California marijuana dealer to the man who, alongside the Medellín Cartel, established the American cocaine trade in the 1970s, at one point reportedly supplying over 85% of all cocaine entering the United States. Penélope Cruz is volcanic as Mirtha, the wife who ultimately destroys him. Franka Potente is heartbreaking as Barbara. Paul Reubens is unexpectedly perfect as Derek Foreal, the flamboyant middleman who starts everything. And a young Emma Roberts plays George's daughter Kristina — the person the whole film is really about.We're going deep on everything: the extraordinary Johnny Depp performance that somehow gets overlooked in discussions of his best work, the devastating Ray Liotta turn as Fred Jung — a man whose quiet decency and unconditional love for his son makes the final act almost unbearable — the real George Jung's actual story and how closely the film tracks reality, and the genuinely tragic postscript that the film closes with: George Jung sentenced to 60 years in Otisville Correctional Facility, with his daughter Kristina having never visited him in prison at the time the film was made — a detail the film lingers on with devastating restraint. We're also talking about why this film gets unfairly dismissed as a GoodFellas knockoff when it is actually doing something far more personal, far quieter, and far sadder than GoodFellas ever attempted.Whether you're a Johnny Depp fan, a Ray Liotta admirer, a Penélope Cruz enthusiast, a true crime devotee, a lover of biographical crime dramas, a GoodFellas and Scarface fan looking for something more personal, someone fascinated by the real story of George Jung and the Medellín Cartel, or just a person who believes the best crime films are really about family — this episode is essential.Topics covered: Blow 2001 | Ted Demme | Johnny Depp | Ray Liotta | Penélope Cruz | Franka Potente | Paul Reubens | George Jung real story | Medellín Cartel | Pablo Escobar | Carlos Lehder | American cocaine history | best biographical crime films | best crime dramas 2000s | most underrated Johnny Depp performances | GoodFellas comparison | Scarface comparison | rise and fall drug films | father son relationship films | Kristina Sunshine Jung | Emma Roberts early career | Boston George Jung | true story crime films | 1970s drug trade | most underrated 2000s films | movie review podcast | film analysis | best Ray Liotta performances | drug kingpin films | best crime films ever | Ted Demme filmography | Boogie Nights comparisonSubscribe, rate, and leave us a review — and tell us: is Blow one of the most underrated crime films of the 2000s? And is the relationship between George and his father the real heart of the movie — or is it the relationship with his daughter?YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/@RegularorMentholContact us: [email protected]