robertjarmstrong

First the kid is pressured by FBI (We assume they're telling the truth that that's who they are) into buying and selling drugs as part of an undercover sting operation. We never see any arrest or other outcome of the operation, and the kid gets to keep the money, which is thousands of 1984 dollars. This relationship mysteriously disappears, and the kid eventually goes into drug marketing for real. Also the kid appears suddenly in Las Vegas -- or is it Vegas, as opposed to some legalized gambling casino near his home (Somewhere near the end someone mentions that it was, in fact, Vegas)? How did he get there? Why? How did his family not ask where he'd been? Is the FBI undercover thing still in the picture? The picture finally does run its course -- downhill -- according to the allegedly true story on which it is based. Was there a mission to this? Did the FBI lie to him or exploit him wrongfully? Were the parents and grandparents too corrupt, or blindsided by their own greed, to place some control over him? Maybe, but the film makes no effort to state its mission, or to have the characters reveal their true natures by any useful dialogue. I suppose that someday a Director's Cut version will be released on DVD, revealing whatever parts of the story were hacked away to get the running time down to somewhere near two hours -- but public demand will probably never rise to such a level.

I figured that by the end of the picture something would happen to explain why this story was being told, what the protagonist would have revealed to him other than an onslaught of schmoozing, name-dropping and "posing" (pun intended). Instead it pretty much follows as it began, with celebrities (We'll take their word for it) of the early Sixties enjoying pleasant conversations about this or that for the sake of saying "I know famous people." I think a more seasoned writer would have developed a pursuit of why the characters are propelled forward into this action that, instead, just seems to keep repeating itself. As Homer Simpson might say about some of his own TV episodes "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened." Probably a storytelling technique was in place in the original book that doesn't quite work as a movie. I made sure to return the video to Red Box before midnight so I didn't have to pay for two days' rental. Honestly I didn't hate it -- one might say it got my mind to relax about as well as a TV talk show could. It just didn't add anything. At least it was only ninety minutes long, although here I suspect that the short duration was a clue to the film's vacuousness.