Lili Fini Zanuck, business partner wife of Richard Zanuck and an Oscar winner as co-producer of Driving Miss Daisy, selects a surprisingly sordid piece for her directorial debut, based on a close-to-the-truth novel by Kim Wozencraft, an ex-undercover narcotics cop.
Jennifer Jason Leigh here tells her story as the fresh-faced rookie who falls for her intense partner (Patric) only to be dragged by him into drug dependency and dirty tricks to nail the dealers. The big problem is that it all carries a very old message, namely that the methods these "good guys" employ to catch the "bad guys" make them no different to the scum with which the film is populated.
Leigh descends from flower-fresh to greasy-haired wreck with credible distress as the moody, dishevelled Patric initiates her and any previously uninstructed members of the audience into How To Cook A Spoon Of Smack and How To Shoot Up, all the while sharing needles with people you really wouldn't want to share the same continent with. More appealingly, she pops some Wonder Capsule in her mouth and flips out into a trip that is positively Cormanesque. Like, where can we get some?
Ancient rock star Gregg Allman, meanwhile, makes his, er, "acting" debut, stomping his way through the proceedings and the Eric Clapton score as the menacing Mr. Big, but mercifully has little to say or do.