Jason Schwartzman plays an ordinary guy floating on the margins of the Crank Head culture, crossing paths with dealers, strippers, TV reality show cops (led by a mullet-sporting Peter Stormare), and other assorted fringe dwellers, all of them desperate, crazed and wrong in their own unique fashion. Jason drives for a wrestling addicted drug chemist (Mickey Rourke in a shambling, grunting, full bodied performance that pre-saged his work in the Wrestler) who is admired for his rough cowboy demeanor but who reveals himself over time to be a selfish exploiter. In between trips to convenient stores to buy drug making supplies, Jason slides in and out of an occasionally cartoonish (literally so, animation and all) twisted reality as he engages in the sort of drug seeking behavior that is the daily and even hourly existence of the drug user. This is not a serious look at drug use and its consequences, however, but rather a trippy slice-of-lowlife wander through the motels, strip bars, trailer parks and porn shops where the bottom feeders of the drug world live. One detail of their lives which is not overlooked by the camera is that 'tweakers' are so caught up the chase for their next high that they have perpetual ADHD, living lives of neglect surrounded by the debris of half-finished jobs and empty pizza boxes. Yuck. Look fast for rock heavyweights Debbie Harry (Blondie) as Jason's neighbor and Rob Halford (Judas Priest) as a porn shop manager.
Amusing and memorable as a movie, but pay attention to the language advisory. The script is as foul-mouthed as anything since the Sopranos went off the air.
Amusing and memorable as a movie, but pay attention to the language advisory. The script is as foul-mouthed as anything since the Sopranos went off the air.