How sad is this?

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Drugstore Cowboy was the film which put director Gus Van Sant on the map and for my money, it remains the best thing he has ever done. Set in the early 70's it is about a group of druggies who go around robbing chemists to feed their habits. The story is fairly basic, with the film being more character and dialogue driven. Matt Dillon puts in a tremendous performance of laid-back charisma as the leader of the group, in a role he was born to play. There is strong support also from Kelly Lynch as his hardened girlfriend and a young Heather Graham as the girl who pays the ultimate price for her association with this gang via an accidental overdose, an incident which the action in the story ultimately hinges on. There is also nice work too from James Remar as a cynical cop on Dillon's trail and William Burroughs as a veteran drug addict. Like most of the best drug films, it neither celebrates nor condemns the lifestyle and leaves the viewer to make up their minds themselves given the events depicted, although it has to be said that it definitely does not glamourize the individuals involved or their life-styles. In many respects this is a story about a dysfunctional family as much as anything. And as such it has quite an abundance of very effective humour. The flashback to the story about the dog and the whole 'hats on beds' thing being two good examples of the somewhat hilarious places this film goes at times. So, this is a movie which combines comedy and drama very well, with both complimenting each other, with the humour rounding the characters out and the serious drama anchoring us into the darker elements of their existence. In this respect, it would not be unrealistic to think of this as being a proto-type for the later British classic Trainspotting (1996). All-in-all, Drugstore Cowboy truly is one of the hidden gems of the 80's.

From director Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), I am sure that I tried of few minutes of this film and got bored, but having remembered the title for so long I was definitely willing to give it more of a chance. Basically highly suspicious Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon) and his wife Dianne (Kelly Lynch) are drug addicts, and are love doing various pharmaceutical drugs, like dilaudid, morphine and cocaine, and keep their habit going they and another couple often steal from pharmacies. They are aware a police officer is getting too close for comfort for them, so they move their operation to another town, but it isn't long after doing this that one of the crew overdoses and dies. They unintentionally have checked into a hotel where a sheriff's convention is taking place, but they do have to move the body from out of the hotel room to into their car, they narrowly avoid getting caught doing this. Believing his warnings is what caused the incident Bob decides he does need help, but he is too scared to join any methadone or any kind of drug eliminating program. Worse comes when junkies he saw earlier ambush his apartment and try to score drugs, and having decided to go straight he doesn't have anything for them to take, so they beat up and then shoot him, but in the end he lives long enough for an ambulance to take him away. Also starring James Remar as Gentry, James Le Gros as Rick, Heather Graham as Nadine, Beah Richards as Drug Counselor, Grace Zabriskie as Bob's Mother and Max Perlich as David. Dillon does well as the junkie who finds it very difficult to let go of his addiction and then later to even try to kick it, I admit I didn't feel as enraptured in this story like I did with Trainspotting, but the drug taking culture is definitely emphasised, not in a judgemental way, and there is interesting provocative material, so all in all it is a worthwhile drama. Very good!

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.

Gus Van Sant continues to dissect the American myth with "Drugstore Cowboy", a film which finds a character called Bob (Matt Dillon) attempting to lift himself out of a lowly lifestyle composed primarily of drugs and theft.But the aim here is not only to paint a portrait of a life hopelessly dependent on (or enslaved to) chemical gratification, but to lay bare the fiction of self-determination, a myth in which many Americans deludedly believe. As Bob mournfully says, all he can do is "try his best and see what happens". His life is so far out of his hands that it is practically somebody else's life, a fact which he observes throughout the film."Drugstore Cowboy" ends on an ambiguous note. After much toil and many attempts to reform, Bob finds himself being rushed to a hospital in an ambulance. Whether he lives or dies is left up to the audience. His fate, as always, is in somebody else's (ours) hands.8/10 – Too familiar and conventional to be great, too honest to be dismissed as typical Hollywood fare. Worth one viewing.