Spun (2003)

Simply Perfect

Memorable, crazy movie

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Spun takes the viewer on a harrowing, hilarious ride-along with a bunch of speed freaks as they blast through a four-day binge. We meet normal guy Ross as he goes to score from his dealer, Spider Mike. At Spider's place, we meet his girlfriend Cookie, her friend Nikki, and teenage hanger-on, Frisbee. Spider has lost his stash and is freaking out. Nikki tells Ross that she can get him some speed, because her boyfriend is the cook.The cook agrees to provide Ross with speed if Ross will act as driver for him and Nikki (Ross being the only one with a functioning car). Ross goes off to meet his occasional hookup, stripper April. They go back to Ross's apartment (complete with eviction notice tacked to the door), and have loads of kinky sex. The cook calls. Nikki needs a ride. Ross leaves April tied to his bed (he'll be "right back") and proceeds to forget about her for a couple of days (Oops! Looks like Ross isn't so normal after all).Things go on in this vein. Frisbee is arrested and forced to rat on Spider. The cook blows up a hotel room. Ross hits rock bottom (but seems not to realize it) when his "girlfriend" (Amy, not his hookup, April) makes it very clear that she has no interest in him beyond the $400 he owes her.Along the way, people do drugs, talk incessantly, have sex and argue. what they do not do is eat or sleep.The movie's best point is its unflinching portrayal of the grubby lives of the characters. Mena Suvari, as Cookie, is a pale, pockmarked mess (contrast that with her radiance in American Beauty). Brittany Murphy, as Nikki, is sexy, but in a very low-rent kind of way. Jason Schwartzman's Ross is a convincing everyman, who becomes a twitchy, red-eyed burnout with scabby cuticles by the end. Formication is a bitch! The acting is great. These characters are not admirable people, and Schwartzman, Murphy, and especially Suvari have taken big risks in playing them.Unfortunately, the film does have some big flaws. Ross utters some embarrassingly amateurish lines like, "...and the great thing is, I'm not hooked!" We know it's meant to be ironic, but there's irony, and then there's irony that comes walking into the room with a sign around its neck saying, "Hello, my name is Irony." It's painfully obvious that this is a first script.In the end, though, this is a film that will stay with you. It's world is grubby, saturated and pornographic, but all to the purpose of getting to the core of the speed-ruined characters who inhabit it.

All in all a fairly decent drug movie. Very very similar in some ways in how it was filmed to Requiem for a dream. But the plot was not as well thought out as Requium. One thing that bothered me about this movie though (being a recovering addict to many different substances) is the lack of realism of the characters eyes when they got high. Their pupils got constricted (pinpoint) when they got high on the crank when they should have gotten dilated. Opiates make your pupils constricted and uppers such as Coke and Meth make your pupils dilate. Other than that inaccurate portrayal of a side effect of drug use it was a decent way to kill an hour and a half. Just don't expect to learn anything and take it as it is.

I was expecting a gritty drama of life as a drug seeker. Unfortunately, the writers chose to interject campy comedy into the rather stoned script, so all notion of interest went away quickly. The direction and editing were second rate. One of Brittany Murphy's rants was so poorly edited, the point of the dialog was lost.There was some good acting by the primary cast of characters. John Leguizamo did an exceptional job as did Brittany Murphy. Mena Suvari also turned in a good performance. Much of the rest of the cast were B actors, turning in some awful performances. The two gals that portrayed the liquor store clerks must have really been clerks because they certainly weren't actors. Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts demonstrated their expected second rate skills.The story line also went into animated trip scenes that I felt were just pornographic. I am not prudish about such things, but it was not relevant to advancing the story or helping us understand the characters. Certainly, I don't need to see a turd drop. What was the point of that? In all this is a mess of a movie. It suffers from bad writing, horrible direction and a severe shortage of good acting. If you are interested in some tales of drugs, skip this flick and rent "Requiem for a Dream".

There's a world of drug-trip movies out there, and the best thing about them is that most of them get away with an antidrug message after taking its audience through its psychedelic ride. This movie could also make some claims, but it's not so interested in that part. It's pretty much just the trip, involving colorful (some would say, ahem, "Tarantino-esque") characters and three days of meth binging.Which, by all means, makes it entertaining, even if the only characters worth half a hoot are the ones played by Jason Schwartzman and Mickey Rourke. The movie starts off with everyone just about ready to freak out and doesn't let down much afterwards, pretty much keeping pace and interest for its full runtime. Considering how easy it would be to slow down, and keeping in mind that the potential fanbase is probably just going to watch the movie when on drugs themselves, it's admirable that they maintained that kind of work ethic.Though, really, most of its all "just a bunch of hooey." (Pardon the silly expression). Rourke's monologue in the porn shop seems custom made to fit into some trivia book about the most instances of the word "pussy" in a three minute running segment. Brittney Murphy's screen time seems only to work because she's pretty and the filmmakers want her to be the ditzy pretty druggy for their audience. And the gay men at the root of the operation don't really seem to have much reason to be there except to include gay men somewhere in there (why not, right?).So yeah, it's fun, and I guess you'll feel a bit "spun" while watching it. It's kind of like the drug-trip style equivalent to the dumb-teenager comedy genre, which means it's almost custom made for any aspiring meth-addicts DVD player.--PolarisDiB