Visuals and cast: 10/10 though.This movie is an unmitigated Hollywood rip-off of Guy Ritchie's first two movies "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch". Only not anywhere near as good and engaging. A speed freak finds himself working as a chauffeur for a methamphetamine "cook", and mayhem ensues. The cast is outstanding, but gets in the way of the movie, because I kept thinking "Wow, Mickey Rourke's back" or "Wow, Billy Corgan did the music" which took me out of the movie. The director comes from music videos and it shows. The movie is like one long music video, glitzy but the story is lacking. A shame, really.

I would really like to enjoy this movie, but I can't. Someone wrote that it takes us into the lives of junkies, but it really takes you into their comic-book, cardboard cut-outs versions. The plot is OK, but, unfortunately, the characters are flat and somehow badly acted. You can clearly see what this flick wants to be and portray, but it only delivers a one-dimensional, "drawn" schematics of the destination point. Comedy part is too predictable and, yet again, flat and you cannot shake the impression that you are just reading an abstract. And Mr Roberts is as fake as my last girlfriend's boobs. Same goes for the girls. They are just not believable at all.

When I saw "Requiem For A Dream" for the first time, I remember that I was puzzled, confused, annoyed, then incensed at the consistent failure to correctly depict the proper physiological effects a shot of any form of opiates would have upon the pupil: Constriction, rather than dilation. Eventually, I decided to stop being so ridiculously anal-retentive about it: Maybe a big ol' pupil was simply considered more... "cinematic" or whatever! HOWEVER: The VERY NEXT major Drug-Flick I saw, "Spun," shared the same, glaring "blooper" of depicting a pupillary response 100% wrong; An oversight [???] made all the more noticeable by the rest of the film's near-unprecedented level of accuracy, realism, and resonance.Can anyone tell me why the pupils get BIG in the heroin movie, and SMALL in the tweak-flick??? I know this question would be a better fit if placed in the message board section, but I can't seem to undulate my way through the verification process. Please, someone: Respond!

Spun is indeed a wild ride, but for more discerning viewers there is little to be gotten from this film.The plot and more importantly the motivation of the characters is incomplete at best. Albeit these characters are operating on methamphetamines or 'speed', but some actions such as the main character tying up a stripper and leaving her in his apartment unbelievable, mainly because of the lack of knowledge of the character's background.The pupil dilating rapid shots of when the characters take the drug is reminiscent of Requiem for a Dream, and as I was watching made me think more and more about that film, and at the end I was convinced that it was nothing more than a knock off of it.The more troubling thing to me was the 'farce' nature of the film. The characters are given cute names such as "spider-mike" and "frisbee" and the police officers that investigate the meth problem surrounding the town put on a deranged "Cops" performance, and are even doing smack themselves when they conduct their police activities. To me, all this didn't make sense and seemed to glorify the use of the drug. The only consequences the main characters meet is a cliché mug shot sequence, and Jason schwartzmans character is denied by his former girlfriend yet again.I could not identify with this film or the characters. Perhaps to understand this movie people must actually use meth, in which a documentary of the actual effects of the drug on people and society would be much more disturbing and realistic. Giant failure, and I really thing this is just a wanna be Requiem for a Dream, which is by far a better portrayal of drug use and the tragedy that ensues.