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Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This well-meaning but oversold 80s drug saga forfeits our concern at about the midpoint. A glossy
soap that attempts to tackle The American Dream ruined by illegal substances, it muffs its own message
by failing to convince us that drugs are the key problem. James
Woods and Sean Young are actually quite good, considering the awkward pace of this strangely
plodding film.
Synopsis:
Hyper, self-doubting Lenny (James Woods) is a hustling New York salesman who tends
to lose opportunities by coming on too strong. Then he's recruited by Max (Steven Hill), a high-flying
real estate millionaire who sees potential in the defensive, over-eager young man. Lenny and his
loving wife Linda (Sean Young) relocate to the Hollywood hills and a dream house and dream car;
selling property with Max to the newly-rich needing to plug tax loopholes is extremely lucrative.
It links Lenny up with a fast crowd he feels he has to impress, especially Car Wash tycoon Joel
(John Capelos). Living hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond their means, Lenny and Linda are in
for a hard fall when Max's business is curtailed by tax reform news from Washington. And the
couple's hopes of landing on their feet are dashed by new addictions from their LA friends - cocaine
and 'ludes.
James Woods is a fine actor and he gives The Boost's Lenny a convincingly self-destructive
desperation. The character goes from an anonymous failure in New York to a high-flying tycoon in LA,
and then down to the level of a pitiful mental case, addicted to cocaine and Quaaludes. It's a kind
of story that's
hard to kill, as we all like tales of aspiration and success. If go-getters in earlier films saw the
American rainbow but failed to reach it, usually it was a conscious choice based on some moral
decision, as in the superlative
The Apartment.
When things start going bad, Lenny uses the 'boost' of cocaine to maintain his illusion of
invulnerability. The film takes the attitude that Lenny and Linda's cocaine habit is the operative
evil, when it simply exacerbates his poor judgment. In reality, Lenny is a social type with no real
trade beyond his sales skills. At the beginning, when he is a total straight, substance-wise, he
ruins the chance to become the rep for a real estate offering by trouncing the concept of his prospective
employers' project. He claims to feel inadequate, but he's really an explosive ego waiting to go off -
like Harry Fabian in Night and the City, he's an 'artist without an art'.
Lenny doesn't really earn anything, as promoter Max (an excellent Steven Hill, of 1963's
A Child is Waiting hands him his dream job on a plate. Max gets him the necessary car and
house, 'success props' to influence their wealthy clients. Max himself lives way within his income,
but Lenny thinks he's landed in some never-ending money pot, and saves nothing while overextending
himself with wild purchases and independent speculations.
The film oversimplifies Linda and Lenny's lives, and while chronicling with campy zeal their giddy
highs and degraded lows, loses its way.
The drugs that the story purports to be about are almost irrelevant to Lenny's problem, and that's
the killer flaw here. Why the sensible Max would sponsor such a loose cannon in the first place is hard to
understand. Lenny shows no sense of perspective or commitment to anything. His feeling that he
won't be able to keep his beautiful wife has nothing to do with her; his whole life
before drugs is based on a credo of success - more, more and more success, and more is never
enough. When he loses the support of Max, his only friend, Lenny falls apart and the show is
essentially over. It meanders for a while with a sojourn in a beach town, until more tragedy (initiated,
of course, by Lenny's worthless big-spender friends from LA) sends them back to try and
reconquer the big-city success mountain. This time Lenny's ability to function is totally shot by
the mental breakdown that the drugs have brought about. As with James Mason in Bigger than Life,
they've only distilled his true character.
This sounds like a fine concept, except The Boost doesn't seem to know it. The villain is
always 'those damn drugs'
even though Lenny's friends and acquaintances are users and dealers, yet seem to survive. The real
issue in The Boost is Lenny's gut-scraping drive to 'be somebody' and knock the world down
with high-flying success, essentially reaping unearned rewards and living like a maharaja simply
to assert an illusion of invulnerablity. Max's invitation to the fast track is what does Lenny in, not
the drugs. They're a later complication.
The film also implies that a high-flying lifestyle is just fine, so long as one doesn't lose judgment
by using drugs. There's no attitude offered about an elite class of sharpies reaping the millions earned
by others. The life looks really attractive. Most viewers will simply shake their heads, seeing the
only problem is that Lenny's bonehead, suicidal career choices have derailed the gravy train. It's
those damn drugs.
Loving wife Linda is a happy cocaine abuser as well, yet she seems to easily escape
the grief just by leaving Lenny. The movie jumps time so quickly that a lot of dialogue is expended
just to keep up the exposition about how much time has passed and what particular
problem is presently on the front burner. At the end we're left with a story that's really limited to James
Woods' functional breakdown - he's the same unstable personality at the end that he is at the
beginning.
The Boost is an entertaining film, but there's something basically unsatisfactory
about it, and I'm not sure I've
tapped into exactly what it is in this short review.
MGM's DVD of The Boost is a good-looking enhanced transfer given a fine encoding. The film's slick
art direction is well-served. For extras, there's a James Woods - Harold Becker commentary that seems
to think the film is a daring masterpiece, although nobody can fault Woods' performance. They also
comment on several deleted scenes, none of which contains essential content, but might have
helped to keep the film from moving too quickly.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Boost rates:
Movie: Good -
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: commentary, deleted scenes
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: October 17, 2003
A Welcome rebuttal from 'B', 10.18.03:
Dear Glenn: There's never been much clear-eyed discussion about this movie, and your
observations are quite interesting. I think that this is essentially a
story of a person far more overwhelmed by life than he knows, and his
ability to cope with this to some degree on a day-to-day basis conceals
this to everyone around him. [More or less.] The guy is already drowning
before he ever meets a dealer or ingests a controlled substance -- and
he's the last kind of guy who should ever come into contact with this
stuff. After that, though... He's basically gone. This isn't a
particularly complex story, but it has a ring of truth to it. I feel
Ponicsan and Becker approached this and said, "there isn't enough to
this -- we have to add more to it." O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Williams...
they would have had trouble augmenting this; it is what it is. As Woods
is almost ideally suited to play this guy, I still regret all the parts
of the movie that you rightly identify as putting all of the onus for
his collapse on the drugs. [Woods is the kind of actor who might be able
to make us see that the drug use disastrously fueled the existing inner
frailty and self-destructiveness of the core of the character.]
The film is based on/suggested by a mostly non-fiction book by Ben Stein
called 'Ludes. The book is just a sad, harrowing account of a troubled,
doomed friend's battles with Quaalude dependence. [There were LOTS of
changes made in scripting The Boost, as cocaine and 'ludes aren't very
similar.] It might have made an honest, bleak little indie movie, maybe
even starring James Woods.
Stephen Hill is good here - Savant is the only critic in America who
would identify him with a reference to A Child is Waiting, of course -
and I also liked seeing Amanda Blake in her brief scene with Woods. I
think it was her last role. Best, Always. -- B
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson
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