Blow (2001) poster
2001 · crime · drama · music

Blow

Directed by Ted Demme2h 4m2001
ElsewhereIMDb7.5287kRT56%Metacritic52
  • sombre
  • extreme
Movie DNA

Sombre, steady, extreme crime / drama, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950's. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George's father cannot make a living and the family goes bankrupt. George does not want the same thing to happen to him, and his friend Tuna, in the 1960's, suggests that he deal marijuana. He is a big hit in California in the 1960's, yet he goes to jail, where he finds out about the wonders of cocaine. As a result, when released, he gets rich by bringing cocaine to America. However, he soon pays the price.

Our read · Blow (2001) reads as a sombre, steady, grounded crime · drama · music entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Where to watch
Not on streaming here right now.Check JustWatch Check Letterboxd
More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of Blow

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a glossy rise-and-fall drug saga with a heavy moral hangover.

ends devastatingit stays with youa slow buildgrips by minute 18attention 4/5earns its lengthsubtitles: partial
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug usegraphic violence

Skip it tonightCocaine excess and inevitable collapse feel too familiar tonight.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself