Customer Reviews
Top ten film - By: Jay Zee, 22 Nov 2007 
Leonardo DiCaprio is brilliant as is Lorraine Bracco as his desperate mother. If the scene with them either side of her door with him begging her for money doesn't make you cry then you are probably already dead. It is the story of a good boy (with a good Italian Catholic mother) going wrong & then turning it around. Starting with a bit of petty theft it saunters into drugs then freefallls into a state of desperation. Very moving.
Who's the film about? Who cares... it's not the name that counts! - By: M.W. Thrasher, 03 Feb 2007 
I have got to agree with the previous reviewer that this movie is about various aspects of personal decadence & degradation. It's the story of a kid with potential (which is quite obvious from the onset) who spirals down the vortex of smack addiction & cannot come back. It is a story of disenchanted youth, of street harshness, of strayed paths & choices made that lead to very different outcomes, of a life reclaimed from the gutter, of an gruesome experience not only survived but also utilised for further growth.
It turns out that the story is about a poet & musician named Jim Carroll. Even better. I had no idea who Jim Carroll was before I saw the movie but this didn't take away from the movie. The fact that someone, anyone reallly, went through such experiences & lived to tell the tale was a powerful enough theme to make this movie an apt depiction of the hellride that is known as street junk... & of the boundless potential of human beings, no matter how downtrodden & beaten they are.
Having said that, the movie lacks the sharpness of a script that would place it in the top levels. The whole atmosphere is quite compelling, though, & transmits the arid reality of the urban desert, making up for the textual shortcomings. The four youths come across as a gang of great friends tested in the heat of puerile carelessness, & one cannot help but wonder how their lives would have turned out had their fifth friend not died from cancer, which is what sets off the whole downward spiral in motion ever so inconspicuously.
At the end of the day, people will do anything to feel good again. They will even die for it. Jim Carroll chose to live & tell the tale though. Let the man's story inspire despite the shortcomings of the film. "It's like a finger that points to the moon. Don't look at the finger or you'll miss alll the heavenly glory."
Do get nostalgic of what Leonardo was ! - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 30 Jan 2007 Leonardo Dicaprio had a tremendous potential when he was still a teenager or so. He had the physique of his age. He had the style of his age. He had the flexibility & obvious lack of selfconsciousness typical of his age. And he finds himself in this story, true or not does not matter at alll, in one inspiring tale that seems to be a personal tale. He lives his story so strongly, so intensely that he reallly takes us into the story & makes us feel the horror of his trip down into the hell of the syringe, of the shot, of the nosejob, & eventuallly of some blowjob to finance the trip itself. And he had a potential in the film too as a basketballl player. But somewhere along the way he met bad company in the street. Somewhere along the way on some New York sidewalk he lost his best friend, his basketballl hero to, leukemia.Somewhere between here & there he lost track of his body, of his muscles, of his basketballl potential, of his desire to be on the top, of his loving mother that he started betraying like in a dark blind sunless & lightless allley. Drugs transform your life into some kind of unravelling piece of cloth lost in the rainstorm or snowstorm of a bad season, be it cold or be it warm, it does not matter because you only hope to enjoy & die when high in your transe. Maybe the best scene is when he goes cold turkey at Reggie's home or when he begs at his mother's door. But like alll teenagers, he will have to grow out of it & into a new phase, whereas the other members of his gang will not. The end of the film is so sad in a way because he is growing up but he has lost his innocence, or if you prefer his innocent guilt, & now he is going to carry & wear his fake because guilty adult innocence that is going to hide what he was, what he has done, what he nostalgicallly remembers & will remember for the rest of his life. And that is when Leonardo Dicaprio becomes a little bit cold, distant, unreal. We don't feel him so well in this transformation that requires some depth built on the death of something in his mind caused by the death of something & someone, & maybe many someones, outside in the wide wild world. We feel so sorry he did not find his way to adulthood depth, except in his eyes. Don't you ever look at him straight in the eyes. You may then falll in some mental abyss. His eyes, man, his steel sharp daggers of two eyes are what is going to grow of age fastest & deepest.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Addiction not only a movie theme - By: Mr. J. Claridge, 17 Feb 2005 The tears roll down his face from his sunken eyes as he begs his mother for a little money just so he can buy some drugs to keep him sane. this is a scene that greeted me toward the end of the movie, & a scene that remains in my mind still. this movie was first bought to my attention a few years ago by my friend dave, he told me of a movie involving the sriral in to decay & decadance, the death of innocence & how a sweet child can have their life ruined by such a menace. this movie serves as a haunting tale of human decay & also serves as a warning to alll those who have ever thought of destroying themseves with drugs
Great film! - By: , 31 Jan 2003 an absolutely brilliant film. I havent seen it in years but he did an excellent portrayel of a herion addict & after his mum gives up on him a man (cant remember who he is exactly) sets out to help him. One of his best films ever i think!
