THe acting on this movie is great. But as with any biography
the truth often gets far behind. A large number of people around the REAL
coke dealer met unfortunate ends probably at the dope dealers orders or his accomplishes. You can't be in the hard drug dealing world without
deadly violence.
But we don't see any of this. In fact a early character is said just to vanish. Yes. well most likely jung had him killed. When the late coke addict director of this movie ( he died overdosing on coke) wanted to tell Jungs story he presented a much kinder version of reality than existed. A true bloody tale would have been more accurate and entertaining but director instead tells us a version of drug dealing that is like a fairy tale in some ways. That's nothing new for hollywood.
Many biographies are so whitewashed that the real person would be amazed that this person on screen is supposed to be him!. The reality though is that coke and it's children have laid waste to millions of lives and to make a movie that doesn't show this destruction is rather strange. But then the director was a coke addict. he's dead and long after the real jung is dead the damage he did to the world will be with us.

Version: U.S.A / Region A, B, C
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
VC-1 BD-50
Running time: 2:03:26
Movie size: 25,12 GB
Disc size: 46,01 GB
Average video bit rate: 22.07 Mbps

Dolby TrueHD Audio English 1474 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 16-bit / 1474kbps (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps)
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps

Subtitles: English / English SDH

Number of chapters: 25

#Focus points
#Commentary by director
#Deleted scenes
#Character Outtakes
#Ted Demme's Production Diary
#Nikki Costa Push and Pull Music Video
#George Jung Interviews by director
#Lost Paradise: Cocaine's impact on Colombia addiction: Body and Soul
#Fact Track: Trivia subtitle track with direct access to additional features
#Theatrical trailers

Drug movies tend to bore me, and this one was no exception. I wasn't too into the narrative style, and Penelope Cruz put forth one of her worst performance to date, in my book, but let me clarify by saying I adore Penelope. Johnny Depp was good for the role, but someone else might have been able to bring more to the character.

I am a deaf person and I count on the Closed Captioning and subtitles to be able to enjoy a movie.

Even though Blow is listed as being Closed Captioned, this copy is not.
A waste of my time and money.

Based on a true story for those of you who have lived on the moon, and it puts you on an emotional roller coaster of cocaine,money,greed,ect. I can't say too much and give spoil it for the few ppl who missed watching it but it just shows how important our children are & how we need to be careful what we say & do. This one of my Favorite movies & I watch it allot,it's in my kitchen dvd so I watch while I cook,Dinner & I just love Jonny Depp & Ray Liotta.

Buy this movie if you want a good movie to watch. Simply put. Johnny Depp is awesome in this movie, he made me really believe that he was George Jung. This movie is a classic!

I watch all movies with Johnny Depp, but Penélope Cruz sold me on this one!
I skimmed the info, but mostly purchased the film based upon the cover shot. When I watched the film, I felt my self drawn deeper and deeper into the story. The initial interest in Penélope Cruz subsided, as I became more an more interested in the escalating business practices of our hero played by Johnny Depp.

I was rooting for our Business man, throughout the film, and I think he got the shaft. I loved the movie until the end, but they were working with biographical material so they closed the story as best they could.

Suffice to say, this guy is no Scarface; he is just an entrepreneur who enjoys living it up. I think the guy should have made friends in Congress, so that he could have ended his run and kept his fancy homes, et al. C'est la vie.

So what makes a movie great is what I often ask myself and I can't put my finger on it but there is something in this movie that puts it in this category. I'm not a huge fan of the subject material, or Johhny Depp for that matter, nor did I know a lot about the whole drug culture. It didn't matter though because this movie is unreal. It's just plain cool. It is just so engaging that you are riveted from the time it starts to the moment it ends. Kind of surprised why this movie did not get better reviews because I honestly don't see anything really wrong with it.

the DVD was not in great condition. started skipping after a few times of watching it. but it arrived in good condition, fast shipping, and overall good transaction.

I must say I actually liked this movie, not just because Johnny Depp was in it, but because it told the story of a man who made it big by selling drugs, but ended up paying the price for it at the end.

As George Jung, Johnny Depp dons long blonde hair, a Boston accent and dark glasses. He portrays a man, who fearing poverty as a boy, makes all the wrong choices in obtaining wealth - first as a marijuana importer and finally as the kingpin in the rise of the cocaine empire. Because he is a decent sort of fellow, not a monster, he is ousted by his Latin American contacts and winds up three times in prison, where he remains today, serving a sixty year sentence, until his planned release in 2015.

It isn't until 42 minutes into the two hour film that cocaine even enters the picture (suggested by his cell mate during his first stay in prison, once he learns of George's marijuana empire). Jordi Molla as the cell mate, Diego, delivers the best performance in the film. He is riveting in all of his guises as friend, confidante, opportunity provider, and ultimate betrayer. Equally good in support are Rachel Griffiths as George's loud mouthed, bitter mother and Ray Liotta as his long loving and long suffering father - a poignant betrayal.

Unfortunately, the film has little value other than providing a history lesson in the rise of cocaine as an underworld marketing empire. TRAFFIC is an interesting companion film to see. Depp is most affecting in his last scenes, now sporting a paunch and dirty long hair, delusionally expecting his daughter's visit, an event which never occurs.

The problem with the film in my opinion is that it lacks tension - it is too matter of fact. We never see George's ambition - he is always too calm about everything that happens to him, good and bad. We care about him but we don't engage with his character. It is a marketing lie to show Penelope Cruz as his co-star. She doesn't appear in the film until the second half and then only in a few scenes as his second wife, a foul-mouthed five letter word.

To sum up, it's a valuable history lesson but not great film.

I would not have liked this movie as much without Johnny Depp. Johnny just amazes me with his acting. He actually makes you SYMPATHIZE and feel SORRY for a DRUG DEALER! Well written, and well directed. I also liked Ray Liotta as the father. He did a great job too.

A very sad movie of how a man wastes all his life selling drugs & spending time in jail.
I would recommend this movie.
I rate this movie a 8 from 1to10!!

There isn't much to say. I kept hearing about how great this movie is so I watched it. There is absolutely nothing about this film that is either intellectually stimulating or even superficially entertaining.

I just picked this up and saw it for the second time. I put it on my list due to my coming across an interview with George Jung in a book on the Drug War. Really, I'm surprised more people didn't love this one. How many more winning attributes can a film possess? It's based a true story about famous people with tons of action and great characters. Depp, of course, was superb, but Jordi Malla as Diego (really Carlos Lehder) is almost as good. The scenes of Escobar stood out as well. I would place this one in my second tier of mafia/action movies.

What George Jung did was illegal. But why George Jung did it, is really and truly an inspiration!

George Jung vowed never to be poor, and he would do whatever it took to make sure that he (and eventually his family) had the best life they possibly could. Sadly, Jung suffered the consequences after being caught, and ineveitably lost more than his money and freedom. It is this that makes the story of George Jung so riveting and true to the heart.

He did what every red-blooded American wanted to do, make money without really having to work to make it. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Dis he get caught? Yes. Was he man enough to stand there and take the punishment? Absolutely. Jung may have sacrificed quite a bit, but he did it all, not for him, but for his family; for his daughter. For that alone, George Jung is really an American hero.

Johnny Depp has always been my favorite actor, because of his versatility and ability to make you believe that he "is" the character. No surprise here that Depp puts on a stunning portrayel of Jung! Also, I'm really not a fan of Paul Ruebens, but his character Derek was amazingly funny, as well as true.

The rest of the cast was also just as solid. Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths, and of course Penelope Cruz, all do wonderful and spot-on jobs as their characters! The directing in this film is also a top-notch acheivement and stands alone as a historical mark.

This film ranks right up there with "Goodfellas" for me as one to become (or may already be) a classic! I urge anyone to at least rent this movie, and see why (I believe) George Jung is a great man!

Every time I watch one of those prison documentaries, the same question comes to my mind: How could someone keep committing crimes, knowing they're going back to prison again and again? Having watched *Blow,* I now know the answer: It just sort of happens.

George Jung as played by Johnny Depp has a wheeler-dealer mentality--always out for the next score; getting high on risk-taking; willing to walk into situations that could go seriously wrong at any moment, and roll with whatever happens. How could a guy like that put in his 8 a day at a regular job and be satisfied? Even though George gets "out" of the business periodically, he's only really happy when he's in. It's like his life in the drug business was technicolor and he's trying to live in black and white. Not gonna work.

The characters in the film are pretty one-dimensional, which is fine because the movie is really about the story, not the people in it. The only casting I didn't like was Penelope Cruz as George's Colombian wife. The one requirement for the role would be that the actress be smoking hot, drop-dead gorgeous, which, no offense, Penelope isn't. However, she does work out better later on in the movie as the worn-down, disgusted single mom stretching everything to the limit just trying to keep her and her daughter's life together.

As far as things to watch out for, there is a lot of swearing, violence, and drug use, which makes sense given the subject matter. Also, if you just quit smoking you might want to wait a few weeks before watching this one as all the characters seem to be puffing on cigs 24/7. But do watch the movie, because it grabs you from the word go and keeps you fascinated the rest of the way, even though you basically know how it's going to turn out. It's also one you can watch more than once or twice, so worth the money to get the DVD.

I did not receive this product at all, I tracked its progress and it said it was sent to me, but I never did receive, I attempted to contact Amazon about this order and there was no reply. I was very dissatisfied and felt like someone stole my money.

I bought this the other day on a whim at a garage sale.

First off, a technical matter: where the hell is the closed captioning on this DVD? I have a hard time understanding what's being said unless I can also read someone's lips. On a 14" TV, that's not always possible. Thus, I appreciate closed captioning. I am sure deaf people do too. This is the first DVD I've seen in a long time that does not include it in the standard features, or if it does, I sure as hell couldn't find it.

Second, the movie itself: at a certain point I lost all sympathy for George Jung. You can root for a small-time pot dealer who is in cahoots with a stewardess to smuggle marijuana cross-country. Even as his greed gets the best of him, nobody's getting killed, nobody's dying of overdoses. But it's hard to have much sympathy for a character who works for a drug lord who shot a man in cold blood at the "job interview."

Jung knew firsthand the damage cocaine was doing to his friends' and wife's health. He saw with his own eyes the damage it was doing to innocent people in Columbia. He wasn't just an addict without the willpower to stop himself from doing another line. He was running the largest drug-smuggling ring in the country.

Boo hoo. He lost his daughter's trust when he didn't show up to take her to California. That trip wasn't meant to make Kristina Jung happy, it was to prove to himself that he was at heart a good dad.

This is one of those movies that irritates me precisely because it could have been excellent. I don't mean that it should have become an anti-drug screed (few things are more tiresome than those), but it could have been vastly improved by the director and screenwriter having more emotional distance from Jung. The problem is not that Jung believes the things he tells himself about himself, it is that Ted Demme does too.

Also, I have yet to see a movie with Penelope Cruz in it in which she does not completely annoy me.

this is def one of my favorite movies!! i love it. pure genius. great and captivating movie. i know it sounds cheesey. but this movie really is great. get it!!! i was really pleased w/ the fast delivery too. THIS IS A MUST SEE and theres no doubt about it that this will become one of your top favs as well.

not one of Jhonny Depps beast movies it was okay kinda sad that he couldn't stop dealing drugs, to be with his family. well all in all it was an okay film.

I have to admit I passed this one by for quite a few months at Blockhead. I was intrigued by the stars, put off by the topic... until I read further into it and discovered this movie was not some drug culture self-glorification eulogy. And then I discovered it was about George Jung, the real life character who introduced Columbian cocaine so devastatingly onto the American drug scene. Rather than repeat the synopsis already presented in the Editorial Reviews, I'll just comment on the things that struck me most poignantly in the film.

1) If ever a young man was influenced by his mother's faults, George Jung was he. George had the same personality as his father--hard working, good hearted, and loyal. But the father was condemned to a life of poverty, damned by his refusal to leave a losing plumbing & heating business. "Without us, people would freeze to death!" The mother, I believe, knew in advance that the father would never be a financial success, and that is exactly why she married him. As long as he was around never earning quite enough to satisfy her, she had a crutch, her eternal 'but-for.' "But for that loser, I coulda had a nice house. But for that bum, I coulda had new drapes." This sick, symbiotic relationship did a lot of damage to young George. When he was growing up he did not have access to the pop psychology books that could have alerted him to the debilitating scripts that his parents wrote for themselves. The precise damage done to young George was in convincing him that adequate money could cure any shortcoming life might saddle him with. And that shortcoming leads me to Point 2, George's monster-wife-from-hell, Mirtha, beautifully rendered by Penelope Cruz.

2) In marrying Mirtha, George married his mother. George was the modern day equivalent of the Greek tragic hero, Oedipus. The only difference was that where Mom needed a nice brownstone to wow the neighbors, Mirtha needed a nice palace--Versailles will do--to wow the jet-set. When George stumbled, and both the Jung men were genetically programmed to stumble, Mirtha, the monster wife, was there to rub his nose in it right on cue. Did you happen to pick up on the first two times George got busted? He was ratted out by first his mom, then by Mirtha. His mom did it not because she thought he was doing something wrong, but because she had to regain her stature in the community. After all, everyone already knew about George's drug doings, so what better way to shut the neighbors up when George came home for an illicit visit than to dial 9-1-1? However, when Mirtha did it, it was out of pure meanness. She was mad and she had to take it out on George.

3) George was basically a good man in spite of his misplaced business focus, and that goodness was also his fatal flaw. George was loyal to a fault, not a good quality in an industry plagued by disloyalty. He'd been ratted out by his mother and his wife, so it stands to reason that the third time George got busted was when his closest, lifelong friends set him up with the feds. Where's the honor among thieves? Perhaps there never was any.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Destiny of Fools", Aarhus Publishing, 2006

Depp brings empathy to an amoral druggie. And makes this fact based tale watchable. Well done.

I absolutely love this movie! The infinifilm version is great too! There are interviews with the actual George Jung and a ton more! Some people don't like it because of the end but I think overall it's an awesome movie especially because it's based on a true story.

In BLOW, Johnny Depp gives us one of his earlier but no less brilliant performances as George Jung, the premier American cocaine importer of the 1980s.

A film heavily influenced by Scorsese's GOODFELLAS and CASINO, BLOW is as frenetic as its namesake drug. We watch Jung grow up in a stressful household with a shrewish mother (Rachel Griffiths) and an easygoing father (Ray Liotta); Ms. Griffiths' characterization as Ermine Jung is so reminiscent of Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill in GOODFELLAS that I initially confused the two actresses. Liotta of course, played Henry Hill.

George flees his childhood home for the endless sunshine of Southern California circa 1967, where, dedicated to the proposition that he will never be poor, he begins to deal drugs. A minor pot bust leads to an association with Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel, and George soon builds his small-scale operation into the major North American llello pipeline.

His vast wealth (literally hundreds of millions of dollars over the years) leads to the predictable vast excesses (think Tony Montana in SCARFACE) and George's hedonistic lifestyle comes crashing down in a white cloud of confusion, betrayal and self-destruction. Depp captures it all perfectly, without caricaturing any of it, an impressive accomplishment when one considers how easily the Cocaine Universe lent itself to cartoonishness in the mid-Eighties. George Jung ultimately was convicted of smuggling and was sentenced to a horrifying sixty years.

Despite George's Colombian connections, he remained a small-town American boy at heart, and Depp deftly and subtlely demonstrates to us George's increasing sense of isolation and disorientation in the midst of the drug culture. In the end, George Jung is left nothing but his sense of aching emptiness as he pines for his daughter Kristina, who, the film tells us as it ends, has never visited her father.

George Jung is seen in the Special Features as a broken, sad and lonely man, condemned to spending most of the rest of his life behind bars. The hardest blow fell on George Jung. Was it worth it?

Depp always commit full heartedly to his performances and this film is no exception. His near flawless performance as the very unlikeable George Jung, for me, is jaw-dropping as it is aspiring. There is no real point to this story other to just let us peek inside the life of a man who establish the cocaine trade in America. The director is careful to keep you at arms length while adding subtle touches to humanize Jung. The best way to do that with an American audience is to throw in a sad looking kid. We're suckers for children.
Maybe the message is: If you're not careful, you too can make a career out of bad choices or maybe it's just fun to watch Johnny Depp do his thing.

I love this movie, but i was deeply dispointed about how I recoved two defective dvds with the same problem. This was not amazon fault, but the dvd company. i would not advise people in buying this verison unless you do not mind small defect which I do not like doing myself.

even those who may not agree with Depp's life choices have to appreciate his acting ability. Blow is one of those great films which really gives him a platform to showcase just what an incredibly talented actor he is.

on the surface, it's a semi-biographical movie about drug dealers and smuggling, but contains a richness and real humanity that's usually missed in movies of this genre.

this movie is a must-have for your collection --- i watch it every 3 or 4 months, and with the limited amount of free-time i have, this is a sincere compliment.

Awesome movie great story have watched about 10 times since I've bought it.

It arrived in a timely manner in excellent condition. It was for a gift so very important. I would buy from here again.

Blow portrays the life and times of one George Jung, a real-life drug dealer currently serving a long prison sentence and not eligible for parole until 2015. Ted Demme presents Jung's life as a series of montages, growing up in Massashusetts son of a hard-working man and a shrewish wife, moving to California with a childhood friend and becoming immersed in the marijuana trade, serving a stint in jail and meeting a Columbian who introduces him to cocaine, working his way up in Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel and making more money than he can spend, betrayal by his colleagues and leaving the business, busted again with large amounts of cocaine in his house during his 38th birthday party, out of jail making amends with his daughter, doing one last job so he can retire to California with his daughter, getting busted yet again and sentenced to 60 years. It's hard to tell how much of the stroy is real and how much is a product of George Jung's imagination, but in the end Demme had no choice but to trust Jung's portrayal of his life. To Demme's credit (and maybe Jung's) the movie doesn't deify Jung's life. He made his decisions for whatever reasons good or bad. We can guess what his motivations were, and decide whatever we want to about his decisions. In the end, Jung's life is yet another largely wasted by drugs. Whatever your opinions are on drugs, this movie's portrayal of Jung's life is largely neutral on the political questions. That's one reason I rate it so highly. It doesn't glamorize drugs, nor does it make any judgements on the penalties that Jung ends up getting because of his involvement in the drug trade.

George Jung is played masterfully by Johnny Depp. Is there any question who is the best actor of his generation? Depp is brilliant in this movie. Ray Liotta is superb as Depp's father as well. The rest of the cast was good except for Penelope Cruz's incoherent portrayal of George Jung's drug addled wife.

The movie covers a lot of ground and lacks some of the detail you might expect because of it. But it's a well made, thoughtful and haunting movie that will stick with me for awhile.

I definitely recommend this one if you are looking for something a little different than your average Hollywood fare.

This film is far from perfect but it certainly is a time capsule of the 70's annd 80's growth of cocaine culture in the US and the story of one man who played a key role in it's spread. Johnny Depp is fabulous in the lead role as George Jung and the supporting cast is solid, with the possible exception of Penelope Cruz who is ok but probably the weakest performer in the movie.
The story follows the unlikely rise of a middle class kid from the east coast who moves to California in 1968 and begins to make easy money dealing pot. The growing drug culture coincides with his meteroric rise and incredible wealth. Like all morality tales the guy falls just as quickly as he rose and winds up with shattered family relationships and in prison.

Well written and plotted, the film moves briskly through 2 decades of George Jung's life without feeling choppy and the story is always intriguing.

This is one of my all time favorite movies. Why would a movie about a notorious American drug dealer be one of my favorites? Simple: the filmakers manage to make you feel sympathetic for George Jung and that, to me, is pretty amazing. Here's a guy who's wrecked millions of lives by distributing and selling cocaine over many years(inbetween prison stints) and 'we' manage to feel sorry for the guy. One example would be the scene where George talks to his wife over the prison phones. She drops the phone, walks away and his young daughter appears standing in the back looking at him. He talks to his daughter, who is angry at him, and after she walks away, George looks up at his wife and violently hits the phone against the glass. Very moving scene... but remember we are talking about a DRUG DEALER(!). Depp is incredible in this, the way he makes you feel sorry for his character, who wants to spend time with his young daughter and manages to keep breaking promises to her. But ultimately it's himself that did him in and he ends up right where he belongs. Prison. I think years down the line Depp will be recognized for this film, not to mention Paul 'Pee Wee Herman' Ruebens and Ray Liotta. Great movie, not so great human beings(in the movie). How ironic that the director of this movie died of a drug overdose. That in itself is pretty sad. Great bonus features-one of the best I've seen on a DVD. Any Depp fans MUST by this. You won't be sorry, not even for a second.

This is one of those movies that had no immediate appeal to me and I never planned on seeing it. Then one day I find myself watching it and being riveted by the story and Johnny Depp's performance.

Depp plays George Jung who according to the film hooked up with Pablo Escobar and the Colombia drug cartel to bring cocaine into the U.S. Jung was responsible for the cocaine explosion in the 70s and 80s by providing a better product than had been available before. Jung makes millions, gets married to a crazy latin woman played by Penelope Cruz and is living (no pun intended) the high life.

Eventually there are plenty of betrayals and paranoia and Jung gets out of the business and tries to live a normal life with his wife and daughter. But when he needs money he goes back to the only thing he knows, smuggling coke which leads to several arrests, the last with a sentence of 60 years.

I guess part of the reason that movies like this are fascinating is that you know there are people like Jung out there doing these things, but its enlightening when you get to see how they did it and the effect it had on their lives. Jung is portrayed in the film as a decent guy who loves his daughter deeply but who can't stop making stupid decisions that ruin his life.

The performances are very good throughout and the movie moves along at a brisk pace until the last act when it slows some.

legendary performance by johnny depp.. eveyone should see this film.. on the other hand , infini film makes dvd more impulsive..