Grade: B-

Verdict: Won't blow you away, but it's a highly watchable morality tale.

Details: Starring Johnny Depp, Franka Potente, Penelope Cruz. Directed by Ted Demme. Rated R for pervasive drug content and language, some violence and sexuality. Two hours, 3 minutes.

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Review: The surf is high, and so are the surfers when George Jung (Johnny Depp) moves to Los Angeles in the 1960s. The bikini-wearing babes on the beach all work as stewardesses, the sand is warm underfoot and grass is thick in the air. But by the end of "Blow," this marijuana-fueled, party-hearty dreamscape has become little more than a heat-shimmer mirage from a long-ago time.

Based on a true story, "Blow" follows the rise and fall (and fall, and fall) of Jung, a young go-getter who partners with Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens), a guy who cuts hair for a living but really makes his money selling pot. It's George's idea to smuggle the stuff back East, to university towns full of "100,000 rich kids' with their parents' money to spend."

Since George's girlfriend Barbara (Franka Potente, of "Run, Lola, Run") is one of the aforementioned stewardesses, they've got an easy MO; Barbara simply stuffs her suitcase full of dope every time she flies east.

Eventually George follows his nose to a cash crop that's even more lucrative: cocaine. Preparing to head south of the border to do some business with Pablo Escobar, he asks a couple of his pals, "Either one of you guys speak Spanish?" A curious mix of keenness and cluelessness, George is a guy so driven by a fear of poverty that he never stops to consider the long-term consequences of his actions. His business becomes as addictive as the very drug he's pushing. Depp--in another of his reliably seductive, slightly unnerving performances--makes George somebody you sort of admire even though you want to shake some sense into him. And trim his surfer-dude hair.

Directed by Ted Demme ("The Ref"), "Blow" sustains a live-wire energy for most of its running time. It has some of the topsy-turvy sociological tone of, say, "Boogie Nights" and takes the same relish in displaying those oh-my-God-what-is-he-wearing fashions and artifacts of the '70s.

Even more than that movie, though, "Blow" recalls the similarly fact-based "GoodFellas" in ways that are sometimes distracting. It has the same rapid-fire voice-over narration, and even features "GoodFellas" star Ray Liotta in the role of George's dad. The comparison between movies is both a compliment and a caveat: "Blow" ultimately can't live up to the fever-dream energy of Martin Scorsese's movie.

Like many things in real life, "Blow" lacks a dazzling second act. As we watch George deal with betrayals and jail sentences, attempt to go straight and try to fly under the radar of federal agents, the movie becomes episodic and ungrounded. One casualty is co-star Penelope Cruz as George's party-girl Colombian wife; her role is reduced to a shrill cartoon. Demme tries to slow things down at the end, trying to wring out a little sentimentality, but this doesn't quite jibe with the rest of the movie.

Go if you're interested in a look at the drug war from the business end of things. Think of it as a less complex cousin of "Traffic."

— Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution