Review: Spun

The debut feature from music video director Jonas Åkerlund, Spun focuses on the three-day odyssey of a crystal meth user. Ross (Jason Schwartzman), after leaving his naked stripper girlfriend handcuffed to his bed, embarks on a series of adventures with drug dealers sporting cartoonish names like Spider Mike (John Leguizamo) and the Cook (Mickey Rourke), a couple of trashy drugged-out young women (Mena Suvari and Brittany Murphy), and a bunch of regular Joes intrusively played familiar rock stars (Rob Halford, Debbie Harry, and Billy Corgan). Åkerlund overstuffs the film with scenes played at hyper speed, hectic editing, and some semi-pornographic animated sequences in an attempt to show how fashionably cool it is to wallow in degradation. The lack of narrative sobriety and the director’s shallow stylistic copycatting (the result is a crude mixture of Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club, and The Salton Sea) are the film’s ultimate undoing. Spun begins with the disclaimer “Based on the truth…and lies” yet the only truth about this wretched exercise in drug culture glorification is that—after being beaten to a pulp by the film’s abundant use of abrasive camera tricks designed to simulate the experience of an intoxicating high—no one is going to care about the story’s authenticity.

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, John Leguizamo, Mena Suvari, Patrick Fugit, Brittany Murphy, Mickey Rourke, Peter Stormare, Alexis Arquette, Charlotte Ayanna, Josh Peck, Debbie Harry, Eric Roberts Director: Jonas Åkerlund Screenwriter: Will De Los Santos, Creighton Vero Distributor: Newmarket Films Running Time: 101 min Rating: R Year: 2002 Buy: Video