Review of Drugstore Cowboy (1989) by Alvin Y — 28 Aug 2012

Drugstore Cowboy, Great Movies.

Gus Van Sant's films all seem to be set at a different level of indie quality. That indie level usually seems to depend on the number of big name stars appear in the film. His films like Elephant or Paranoid Park star non-actors in leading roles, and they're some of the most experimental of his films. But the experimentation goes away slightly when stars like Matt Dillon or Kelly Lynch are introduced like in Van Sant's 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy. Drugstore Cowboy is about a group of junkies who spend their time robbing pharmacies so they can use the myriad of drugs available to get all sorts of new and crazy highs. But after a while the crew has to take their show on the road, and things quickly get complicated in this bleak real world drama that may or may not accurately capture the essence of drug addiction and the lengths some go to fuel said addiction.

I said the experimental reaches Gus Van Sant goes to are quelled slightly for this film, and they are, but there is still some interesting and trippy things going on. Van Sant employs a surreal quality to his whole film, capturing the character's highs as dream like mind trips with all sorts of hidden meanings that don't make a ton of sense. But then again, they don't entirely need to. The whole film has a somber and dream like quality to it that drives the whole story and is fuel for the characters motivations, what little motivation these characters have. It's a very strange and loose story about some very strange and loose people.

The problem with swathing this film with such a bleak and dreamy tone is that it makes Drugstore Cowboy kind of dull. It starts out with a lot of promise and plenty of potential. The film opens by interesting Matt Dillon's character, Bob, as he narrates an introduction to what he does and who he does it with. We then see one of their robberies take place in a tense and quiet moment. From there the plot starts to sink in as the characters lives grow more and more harrowing and the situations they find themselves in become increasingly grave. But at a certain point the film sort of plateaus and stops being interesting and you stop caring so much about the characters. I was never painfully bored with this film and I watched with a keen and interested eye all the way through, but I was by no means enthralled and the story didn't grip me like it should have.

Drugstore Cowboy is a very interesting film and it does plenty of things right. Unfortunately it's just a little boring, and the events that play out aren't terribly original, and I felt like I was just watching another reformed junkie film with a little bit of a Gus Van Sant twist. This is still a pretty decent film, but don't expect too terribly much from it.