Watching a quartet of teenage junkies rob pharmacies and get high may not be everyone's idea of a good time. But director Gus Van Sant looks beyond the desperate urge for another fix and finds a good deal of insight into the addict's pursuit of slow death in the fast lane, with Matt Dillon giving a memorable performance as the leader of the sometimes comically pathetic outlaw gang. Van Sant's unflinching depiction of the junkie lifestyle is entirely sympathetic but totally unsentimental, showing the non-conformist need for a high without ever glamorizing the drug culture. The episodic story is set (and with good reason) in the year 1971, after the mysticism of experimentation had long since become the grim reality of addiction, but it loses some momentum after Dillon enters a rehabilitation clinic, at which point the film attempts to express verbally what it already proved it could show visually. But the script never sells out for any tidy moral lesson, and the presence of Beat Generation icon William Burroughs in a small but notable cameo role lends a measure of credibility to Van Sant's intentions.
Review of Drugstore Cowboy
