Gus Van Sant's sophomore effort is a reference-worthy entry into two separate, though occasionally linked, genres: the outlaw road movie and the drug film. Its title works on both levels. The term "drugstore cowboy" is an idiom for those who get high on prescription medication, and the film's protagonist, for a time anyway, has the swagger and rugged quality of a cowboy. What outlaw and addict movies often share are characters who generally don't see themselves as bad people, who certainly don't strive to be bad people, yet they just can't help but make a bad situation worse.In Drugstore Cowboy, Van Sant follows a ragtag group of users who get their kicks (and their next hit) from knocking off pharmacies. At the head of the group is Bob (Matt Dillon), a reckless yet cautiously superstitious thief who organizes his raids around perceived changes in luck. When he's "hot," he will rob any place, anywhere, any time of day, no matter the chances; when he's cold, he can barely leave his house from worry. He's married to his high-school sweetheart, Dianne (Kelly Lynch), though what romance might have existed between them faded long ago.Bob and Dianne form an immediate dialectic that changes over the course of the film but still defines the contrasting moods of Van Sant's script. Bob lives for the thrill of the chase; whenever Dianne broaches the subject of sex, Bob changes the subject to the next heist. (In fairness, I'd imagine that drugged-up sex doesn't stimulate nearly as much as a hit). Dianne, on the other hand, just wants the end result. The effort of planning and carrying out a raid is the price she has to pay for her happiness.In lieu of children, Bob and Dianne "raise" two younger junkies, Rick (James Le Gros) and Nadine (Heather Graham in an early role). They look after each other because they need each other to pull off the robberies, and the group becomes a makeshift, thoroughly dysfunctional family. That dynamic gives Drugstore Cowboy an edge that most other outlaw/drug movies didn't have at the time, a dynamic that was promptly diluted to an oversimplified essence and injected into most subsequent stories of addicts.

A pharmacy-robbing dope fiend (Matt Dillon) and his crew pop pills and evade the law.I was never really into the drug culture. I had friends who were, and some who still are. None who reached the point of robbing pharmacies, but still knee-deep in their own way. This film does a great job of showing the best and the worst of that world. Before "Trainspotting" or "Requiem for a Dream", this really got the point across... and with an incredible cameo from William S. Burroughs.This is easily Matt Dillon's best role. He had a good run in the 1980s and 1990s, but seems to have fizzled out after "Something About Mary" and "Wild Things". A shame, really. Even Heather Graham is pretty good here, and she was still in the phase of being a love interest for the two Coreys.

Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch play a couple that use Heather Grahame and James LeGros to help them stage distraction burglaries at pharmacies in Oregon in the 1970's. Director Gus van Sant paints a numbing and sobering look at their lives, from thwarting cop James Remar and his team, always escaping the seemingly inevitable bust and always looking toward their next big hit. After a drug related death, the second half of the film concerns itself with Dillon getting himself clean.Without the ultra intense visuals that hallmarked the later 'Trainspotting' and 'Requiem For a Dream', van Sant uses time lapsed superimposed images to convey moments of thought and of being high. Matt Dillon in particular portrays the pained intensity of a troubled young man very well and Lynch is good, also, conveying a hard-edged individual.The film never wags any fingers nor blames anybody, or anything. There is no glamour either. Somewhat unlike the other two aforementioned drug movies, there's little squalor or total degradation. No pained or graphic scenes of opiate withdrawal. Drugstore Cowboy doesn't have the roller-coaster ups and downs of those two films, either and we're left with a quality drama that informs as much as it entertains. There's also a smattering of dark humour and a great soundtrack too, that superbly enables the mood.

Speaking as a recovering opiate addict I can think of no other movie that depicts addiction in a more accurate realistic way. To be fair the man with the golden arm and hat full of rain were also very well done for their time but drugstore cowboy is the best.I have read reviews here that claim trainspotting or requiem for a dream as better.....not even close.The reason is although many of us ex junkies tended to glamorize drug use eventually we come to realize the redundancy and tediousness that consumes our existence. In the movie drugstore cowboy we see that very thing.They are always either getting high or, and this seems to take up much more time plotting the next score.So forget the melodramatic phony Hollywood depiction of drug addiction; if anyone wants to see the true nature of addiction with all the monotony that goes with it there will be no better movie than this .A couple of points I thought the movie took place in and around Portland Or...and to easily answer one reviewers curiosity on why Nadine was hanging around ....drugs.And