Search - Drugstore Cowboy on DVD

Jeff V. (burielofmel) from HARRIMAN, TN
Reviewed on 3/12/2008...

Matt Dillon is great in this as is the rest of the cast. This is a must have movie in my opinion.

5 of 8 member(s) found this review helpful.

Like having to tie your shoes

C. Rocklein | 07/07/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Matt Dillon is unusually good. The story is exciting and suspenseful with some surprisingly funny moments as well. My favorite line when he checks into rehab and the lady is asking him questions:

"Have you ever considered becoming a counselor and helping other addicts with their problems?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Well, to begin with, nobody, and I mean nobody, can talk a junkie out of using. You can talk to them for years, but sooner or later they're gonna get ahold of something. Maybe it's not dope - maybe it's booze - maybe it's glue, maybe it's gasoline. Maybe it's a gunshot in their head - but something, something to releive the pressures of their everyday life... like having to tie their shoes."

The filming is good, the acting is good, the story is good. Was sorry to see it end when it did. This movie was filmed in 1989, set in 1971. For another very excellent junkie movie with a killer twist, try Born to Win. While Drugstore Cowboy was set in '71, Born to Win was filmed in 1971. For being the late 80s, Drugstore Cowboy does OK at recreating the era. It's strong point though is it's lack of melodrama and overacting in a story with characters that are simultaneously sympathetic and corrupt."

Drug addiction is social addiction

Jacques COULARDEAU | OLLIERGUES France | 07/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"One gets addicted to drugs, for sure, but that is only a small part of the business. This film tries to show how the addiction is an attitude, a social behavior, an act of belonging to a group, a community, a social class nearly, but not that far away from it. Here the dependence is threefold. First the girlfriend who is determined to stay addicted because her addiction is moderate enough to be controlled. Then the boyfriend and his own girlfriend and this time there is some status question here and to go on is to belong to a certain level of humanity, a certain level of masculinity. And then there is the wider community of the junkies, dealers and other characters in that farcical, yes farcical, melodrama. Then there are various events that make that addiction stick. The solidarity with the girlfriend with whom he was arrested, busted and jailed. He owes her to go on. Then the boyfriend who is the guarantee that he is normal, a normal male, a real male, a male in one word full stop and period. The cops are chasing them, and bad events happen. The boyfriend's girlfriend dies of an overdose one night in total solitude, while a burglary attempt in the pharmacy of a hospital fails pitifully and pathetically, and they have to get rid of the body and bury her in some woods. That makes you stick to your addiction, to your group. And yet, out of boredom and tiredness, and since one of the group has stepped out and down, he decides to do the same and get out of the hassle it has all become. And then you find out very easily how the wider social group is catching upon him. Two of his old acquaintances, now he is isolated, try to get his stash of drugs, since they are convinced he has one, they refuse to believe he has quitted, and then since they are getting nothing and nowhere they decide to shoot him dead, which they fail doing because they know nothing about using fire-arms. And there we are in the ambulance taking him away. Will he tell who attacked him or not? Will he go back to that world and that habit? We cannot know and say right away, right now. But one thing is sure. If he goes back it would not be for the physiological habit, but for the social and maybe emotional habit. Drug addiction is first of all in the mind and in the social behavior of the addict, not in his physiological parameters.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
"