Drugstore Cowboy

Drugstore Cowboy is a movie with a length of 1 hours and 44 minutes, rated R and released 1989. Directed by Gus Van Sant who went on the direct the good works of My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting. This is an accomplished director whose background is in documentaries. An insightful depiction of the life of junkies, a quartet robs pharmacies to fuel their addictions.

The actors in the movie are......

• Matt Dillon plays Bobby Hughes the leader of the gang, too focused on scoring drugs to pay attention to the girlfriend. When his mom see's him she runs to hide her purse. Bob is the anti-hero of the movie.
• Kelly Lynch plays Dianne who is Dillon's wife.
• James LeGros plays Rick, the muscle of the robbery gang. LeGros was one of the surfer dudes in the movie Point Break.
• Heather Graham plays Nadine, Rick's girlfriend, a girl they picked from the counter up when they were robbing one of the drugstores. This was Graham's first major movie, filmed when she was just 19. Heather is better known from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and as Rollergirl in Boogie Nights.
• James Remar plays Gentry the detective assigned to the chain of robberies. Remar is well known as the bad guy in 48 Hours, nowadays he has mostly television roles as scumbags.
• The counselor in the rehab unit is Beah Richards the same lady who with Sidney Poitier in both Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night.
• David is played by Max Perlich, an actor with a face that will always be childish. He has been many movies and has recurring roles in Law & Order.
• Tom the Priest is played by William Burroughs an older actor who in a previous career was considered one of the three important authors of the Beats Generation. Burroughs was real ex-junkie, he died in 1997 at the age of 83.

In the early seventies Bob runs a crew that robs drug stores for the merchandise. Steal the drugs run back to the apartment shoot the stuff up. Bob's mother tells the wife that she doesn't hate them but they cannot run and play for their entire life. Ringleader Bob Hughes, along with his wife and their underlings Rick and Nadine, take the show on the road after things get to hot at home. When Nadine dies from an overdose of diluadid, Bob swears off drugs and tries to rebuild his life - minus his wife, who is determined to stay hooked.Home got to hot because Bob set up a situation where a neighbor though the police were peeping Tom and opened up on them with a shotgun. This pisses off the police who beat up Bob and tell him to get out of town. After robbing a drug store on the road, the gang score big in a small town drug store, hitting on some dilaudid. After the score the gang steals car and robs a hospital pharmacy. Nadine left alone in the hotel room for hours, till the next morning, overdosed on dilaudid while they were gone. Before they leave they hide the body in the attic of the hotel room. Then they are asked to leave the hotel because it is reserved for the incoming Sheriff's convention. Bob holds the kids Rick and Nadine in low esteem, calling them television babies. When retrieving the body from attic, it get dropped from the hole to the kitchen floor. All the while police showing up for the convention. The body is stuffed in a garment bag and slipped into the truck for burial in the woods. The stress convinces Bob to go home and get on a methadone program, Diane has no interest. In the rehab clinic Bob recognizes Father Tom, a defrocked priest. Then Bob gets a job in a machine shop and settles into the routine of a clean life. The police show and encourage his progress. Then his wife shows up and looking good and leaving a bag of drugs, he talks about how he is coming to like life clean. Diane spurns Bob's advance, she is no part of Rick's crew. After a day of work Bob returns home and the untouched bag of drugs is still there. Bob brings the bag to Tom the priest. After giving up the bag David the addict shows up to rob the drugs. From that he gets his ass kicked. After the beating, David gets his partner to shoot Bob, and leaves him to die. Then the movie wraps to the beginning, with Bob on the ambulance stretcher. As he is riding Bob says to himself, "its this fucking life", still alive. The preist "the idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is anathema to these idiots. I predict in the near future rights wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police aparatus."
This movie gets a score of 27 out of 50. An interesting movie that has a takes an unglorified view of drug life.

• Character development 6 of 10, this is a good story of how the anti-hero recognizes his futility and acts to correct.
• Writing 4 of 10. The book which serves as the basis was writtin by an incarcerated habitual addict-feloon. The writing itself is simplitic by carries a sense of reality.
• Photography 7 of 10. Filmed in 1988 this was good picture this developed a aura of the early seventies. Many moving shots.
• Acting 5 of 10. The parts are all played as pitiously shallow, the result of their habits. Dillon in interesting. Lynch is as usual, lucky that she is so good looking because she can't act for shit.
• Concept 5 of 10. The mixture of drug abuse, petty crime and search for redemption. I do appreciate that the movie did not promote the Hollywood coolness to the drug lifestyle.