Drugstore Cowboy
Directed by Gus Van Sant, Jr. Starring Matt Dillon (Bob), Kelly Lynch (Dianne), James LeGros (Rick), and Heather Graham (Nadine)
A film review by Chris Loar Copyright 1998 Chris Loar
_Drugstore Cowboy_ is an odd hybrid. On the one hand, it's a coming-of-age story about a man learning to put away childish things; on the other, it's part of a genre of sorts that turns drug addicts into tragic icons of failure and missed chances -- the romanticism of the beautiful loser, a revised and updated style of noir. And although this film has its failings, it is on the whole a fine bit of filmmaking that explores the second genre in terms of the first; that is to say, it tells the story of a man learning to see through the romanticism of his own drug noir tale, and coming to appreciate the pleasures and satisfactions of an ordinary working stiff's life.
The film is told in flashback; the first things we hear and see are the voice and face of Bob (Matt Dillon) being hauled off in an ambulance. Bob ruminates briefly, and then begins the story of his days as the leader of a crew of junkies who support their habit by knocking over drugstores, hoping to score a bit of dilaudid among the stool softeners and antidepressants. His crew consists of his girlfriend/wife (a convincing Kelly Lynch) and another rather waiflike couple, Rick (James LeGros) and Nadine (Heather Graham, cute as a button). Their setup is rather simple: Bob robs the store while his three comrades create a diversions.
Things are going well until Heather brings down a hex on the foursome by daring to mention dogs -- one of several taboos enumerated by the rather superstitious Bob. And misfortune does indeed begin to befall the little band; the heat (in the form of some hard-nosed detectives) begins closing in. Bob's crew decides to take a little trip up the coast until things cool down, and for a while they enjoy some success hitting unsuspecting drugstores in smaller towns. But bad luck really sets in when Nadine makes the mistake of tossing a hat on a hotel bed -- the worst omen imaginable. The events that follow are so horrific that Bob decides to go straight and before long finds himself in a rehab clinic, settling into a drab but somehow satisfying routine of work. And while the closing sequences bring us back to the image of Bob being taken to the hospital to be treated for wounds received at the hands of some of his associates, we can still see him smiling a smile of maturity and grace.
The film succeeds in telling this fairly straightforward tale in a way that conveys the junkies' edgy experience without lurching into some sort of cliched psychedelia. The truly psychedelic sequences, which could have easily come across as ham-handed, are salvaged by Van Sant's sense of humor and visual wit (look for a nice homage to _The Wizard of Oz_). Other sequences make very effective use of disorienting close-ups, which seem to me to succeed in conveying the loss of proportion that our anti-heroes are experiencing. And, on the whole, Van Sant uses his cast well; Kelly Lynch is particularly convincing. Dillon's work here is a little more problematic; he really has a little too much energy and presence to make a convincing junkie. And we don't really see his character descend into the pit of suffering through which he attains his salvation; he comes off as healthy and vigorous when he is supposed to be reaching a personal low. This makes his transformation into a straight working guy rather anticlimactic; his new self is calmer, more self-assured, and mature, but not nearly so exciting.
But then, that may be precisely the point that Van Sant is making. Because of course an ordinary person's tale is not particularly exciting; this is a drug noir film, and the excitement is out there on the street, running from needle to needle, not in the machine shop or the halfway house. What's impressive about the film is the way it undermines the very genre it initially seems to be a part of; our hero matures, and comes to see the falsity of his own role as a beautiful loser, choosing instead to live as a normal guy. It's not an exciting role to choose, but it does have one virtue -- it's real.
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