Drugs On Film

by Helen Earnshaw | 31 January 2016

We have seen plenty of drug movies hit the big screen over the years, including Sicario, which will be released on Blu-ray, DVD and digital platforms tomorrow.

Sicario

The theme of drugs has been popular over the years with comedies, biopic movies, and crime dramas exploring themes of addiction and the war on drugs. To celebrate the release of Sicario, we take a look at some of the drug movies... Sicario is in remarkably good company.

- Sicario (2015)

It seems only right that we should start with Sicario, a movie that marks the return of Denis Villeneuve to the director's chair. I was a huge fan of Prisoners back in 2013 and I am delighted to see him back at the helm of another hugely impressive movie. He really is a director to keep an eye on as his movies just keep getting better and better.

He is a filmmaker with something to say and with Sicario, he goes one further in accusing all sides of the war on drugs of being as morally grey as one another.

I love a good crime/thriller and Sicario is a heart-pounding and visceral film experience that is compelling from start to finish. As well as being action packed, Sicario is an intelligent thriller that will challenge your views and will leave you asking a lot of questions.

As a filmmaker, Villeneuve is well and truly becoming the master of tension and suspense and he really does notch it up slowly as the danger and the stakes for the characters get higher and higher. It is great to see Villeneuve back in the director's chair and he has delivered another real gem in the crime genre - this really is one of the best crime/thriller movies that I have seen in recent years.

Emily Blunt delivers a blistering turn as an initially naive FBI agent sucked into - and unceremoniously spat out of - the never-ending stand-off between 'good' and 'evil' whilst Josh Brolin proves that when it comes to the CIA, you need more than one shade of grey within that stand-off.

It's the BAFTA-nominated Benicio Del Toro, though, who really shines as a gun for hire with his own unique insight into a socio-political landscape blighted by the cartels literally responsible for ruining his happiness. Essential, unnerving and almost unbearably tense stuff.

- Traffic (2000)

Steven Soderbergh diverted his gaze to the war on drugs back in 2000 with a convoluted, considered and riveting look at just how complicated the situation is.

Traffic stars Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Don Cheadle and that man Del Toro (again) in a layered affair that examines everyone from the cartel members through to a prominent high court judge who realises his daughter isn't just smoking cigarettes behind the bike sheds.

At the time, the film was congratulated for examining the issue, and dramatically the film stands up 15 years later. Traffic is a thought provoking and incredibly intelligent movie that is gripping from start to finish.

It is a complex film as Soderbergh balances a string of different storylines and yet he keeps all of the plates successfully spinning throughout. Throw in some interesting, complex, and dark characters and you have a real gem on your hands.

Traffic went on to be nominated for five Oscars, winning four; Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for del Toro, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.

- Requiem For A Dream (2000)

Darren Aronofsky's unutterably bleak examination of what being a drug addict actually means arguably vies with Trainspotting for making taking drugs look like just the worst thing ever.

The film follows Jared Leto's drug-addicted waster, his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly, definitely not behaving in a way Hoggle would approve of) and friend Marlon Wayans as they do whatever they can to maintain their destructive habits.

Limbs, dignity and futures are lost in the most horrifying fashion but it is the film's more domestic drug abuse - the diet pill addiction Ellen Burstyn develops as a direct result of her loneliness - that perhaps hits home the hardest in a film that leaves most audiences staring at the floor and determined never to take a painkiller ever again.

Requiem For A Dream is a movie that is a tough watch at times and it is not a film that you would really watch on a regular basis.

Leto and Burstyn give two stunning central performances - Leto lost twenty-five pounds to capture Harry's gaunt look - and they will stay with you long after the credits have rolled. Burstyn was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award for her central performance in the film. She lost out on the Oscar to Julia Roberts for her role in Erin Brockovich.

Requiem For A Dream is a movie that polarised audiences when it was released; some called it a masterpiece while others struggled to get their head around Aronofsky's style. Like it or not, there are not many other movies like Requiem For A Dream.

- Dallas Buyer's Club (2014)

Matthew McConaughey has changed the path of his career in recent years and he completed his journey from big screen pretty boy to Hollywood heavyweight with a stunning performance in Dallas Buyer's Club.

This was a drug movie of a very different kind as McConaughey took on the role of Aids sufferer Ron Woodruff in the Jean-Marc Vallée directed film.

The film itself is a different flavour of drug movie with the Woodruff's 'dealer' painted as a hero who starts playing the system to supply AIDS patients with the drugs they desperately need.

It is a stunning central performance from McConaughey, who lost forty-seven pounds to take on the role of Woodruff, a man who would not be beaten by a system that would not help him. It is a powerful film about the stigma of HIV/Aids at that time and the battle so many faced to get the drugs that they desperately needed to survive.

McConaughey and Jared Leto win the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars for their work; the movie was also nominated for Best Picture.

- Blow (2001)

There'd be no war on drugs, of course, if there wasn't a consumer demand for the Bolivian Marching Powder and its variants. Blow examines the life and times of one George Jung, the man single-handedly credited with establishing the cocaine market in America in the 1970s and it's a fascinating insight.

The movie saw Johnny Depp return to the biopic genre as he teamed up with filmmaker Ted Demme for the first time, to deliver a wonderfully 'straight' performance that is up there with some of his best work.

Penelope Cruz provides able support as his Jung's complicit wife enjoying the spoils of the drugs trade and the cast is rounded out by Run, Lola, Run's Franka Potente and Ray Liotta, himself with a wealth of experience when it comes to playing shady characters who take a salary from South America...

While it is an interesting insight into the life, highs, and lows of Jung's life and career in the drug world, it is Depp's performance that is the true standout aspect of this film.

Depp gets under this skin of Jung the happy-go-lucky life he led when his business was at its height, and what he lost because of the life that he chose to live. This is by no means a perfect movie, but Depp's central performance really does elevate it and allows you to forgive some of the weak points.

- Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Darren Aronofsky might have created the ultimate bleak modern morality tale in Requiem For A Dream but Gus Van Sant was ploughing that furrow years before with the criminally underrated Drugstore Cowboy.

Setting its examination of addiction in the 1970s, this drama stars a never-better Matt Dillon as a small-town drifter who, along with his girlfriend (Kelly Lynch) passes from town to town with the sole intention of hitting local drugstores after hours for a fix.

Straightforward in its examination of our not unsympathetic anti-heroes, the film still has a powerful emotional left hook and the film's themes of isolation and societal segregation are still a rich vein in Van Sant's subsequent films.

Drugstore Cowboy was only the second feature film of Van Sant's directing career and it was based on the autobiographical novel by James Fogle. As well as being in the director's chair, Van Sant teamed up with Daniel Yost to pen the film's screenplay.

This was one of the early roles of Dillon's career and it helped establish him as an up and coming actor to watch out for; he would go on to enjoy huge success throughout the nineties.

- Trainspotting (1996)

Trainspotting hit the big screen back in 1996 and it was only Danny Boyle's second outing in the director's chair - however, it was to be the movie that really did put him on the map.

Trainspotting is just one of those movies that doesn't come along very often as it was one of the most daring movies of the decade. The film followed a group of heroin addicts in the eighties and the impact this addiction has on their lives.

Trainspotting is a movie that was a very graphic look into heroin addiction and it is an incredibly powerful and dark movie.

What is an ever greater testament to this director is that Trainspotting, twenty years on, is just as hard hitting as it was when it was released. It is still widely regarded as one of the best anti-drugs movies to have ever been made.

Trainspotting made the world sit up and take note of Boyle and actor Ewan McGregor and John Hodge went on to pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.