Jonas Ackerlund's SPUN leaves you feeling dirty, breathless, scuzzy, and like you've just watched a parade of every single facet of Chrystal meth addiction unfold in front of you like a horrible carnival of lost souls and ruined lives. It's a hard flick to sit through, but there's a brutal poetry and gutter stained beauty to the characters lives, and the events that unfold are a nonsensical, dizzying merry go around of calamity, confusion and speed addled insanity. It's my personal favourite film of about drug addiction ever made. Jason Schwartzman plays Ross, whose mission in life is to score the next hit. After a delirious opening sequence set to a calming rendition of Number Of The Beast, he arrives at the home of Spider Mike. John Leguizamo has never had a shortage of energy, and here he lets the ripcord fly off the handle, handling his role like a squirrel stuck in a vat of distiller caffeine, bouncing off every wall in sight and chewing the scenery like a plastic straw. Mena Suvari plays his equally addicted girlfriend Cookie. Brittney Murphy bring surprising depth to her role as a girl who Ross strikes a friendship with. The two of them eventually find their way to the house of The Cook, played by Mickey Rourke. From there the film heads down a scum encrusted rabbit hole of nonsensical run ins, hapless failures and an eventual rock bottom inevitability where every character finds themselves at a place where if they go any further with their lifestyle, there's no return. Rourke finds the emotional anchor in an otherwise manic roster, and even though he's off the wall for much of the film, he has a monologue in the eleventh hour that grounds his role in tragic regret. Very underrated performance from him. Murphy balances the ditsy slut aspects with a maternal yearning for something better than the road she went down. There's a whole rats nest of other assorted characters and cameos running around, from Peter Stormare's aggressive, hilarious narc, to Patrick Fugit's grotesque Frisbee, to Debbie Harry is from Blondie fame as a nosy feminazi. Even Eric Roberts shows up for a brief reunion with Rourke. The film has a heavily stylized, go for broke attitude that pushes the boundaries of what movies have been able to do, in the best way possible. It shows you not from an outsiders perspective what it might be like to observe people on this drug, but gives you a very intimate, non judgmental day in the lives of these manic, lost soul pixies, ghosts of their former selves, enslaved in the mania and constant need for a fix that is their own design. If you can handle this sort of stuff and like the sub genre (Trainspotting, Requiem For A Dream, The Salton Sea etc) then this is a heavy hitting visual and auditory blast of pure experimental cinema, and a total joy to watch. Just bring a barf bag.

I started to watch this movie having no idea what it was about only that it had Mickey Rourke, who I am a fan of, and Brittney Murphy who my wife likes.All I can say is that this movie is awesome. Yeah there isn't much of a story, it's just a four-day window on the lives of these freaks. Not much going on here storywise just people driving around, hanging out and spinning their wheels doing nothing. The only real story element is the drug raid towards the end of the film.What makes this movie great is the acting, scenery and cinematography. After watching this film for a while you start to feel as if you're tweaking with the cast. Murphy and Rourke are great, I think that I just fell in love with Murphy after watching this. Also Leguizamo, who I normally can't stand (hated his one man show and the Mario Bros. movie) was incredible in here as Spider Mike. There is a lot of comedy here too that works.It starts off a little slow but once the police raid story line comes in the movies gets 10 times more interesting and I couldn't stop watching. My wife on the other hand bailed after about thirty minutes since the movie seemed to be going nowhere and she was disgusted with the grotesque condition of the flop house, near vomit inducing. I stuck with it because of the great cinematography and I was falling for Murphy.Bottom line: The movie takes a while to get going, but the cinematography, humor and accurate depiction of tweakers and flophouses keeps you on the hook until it gets interesting.

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.

If it doesn't bother you when a director blatantly rips off another movie, take this one for a spin. It's Requiem for a Dream for the methamphetamine crowd. Not as good, of course, but it's a fun ride. Lots of quick edits, lots of Oliver Stone weird, sweaty, extreme close-ups, and absolutely no substance. It's just a week, or so, in the life of a bunch of speed freaks. Nothing more.BIlly Corgan contributes some good stuff, via Djali Zwan to the soundtrack and gets in a quick cameo. There are lots of cameos alongside the ensemble cast. Leguizamo's a little over the top, and Mira Sorvino, er ... Mena Suvari seemed a little stretched, but all in all not too bad. It's a fine line between over-acting and acting like you're freakin' on speed, so I'm not going to complain.Spun is also surprisingly explicit in a number of ways: Leguizamo's masturbation scene wearing nothing but a sock; the shot of a little turd splashing in the toilet while Sorvino takes a dump; a girl tied to a bed for pretty much the length of the movie, naked and spread eagle with gaffer's tape over her mouth and eyes forced to listen to a skipping CD the whole time.There is no moral to the story. Heck, there really isn't any story. It's just one big buzz with events. I don't mind that it's a Requiem for a Dream clone in style, not substance. I would imagine this kind of physical film making via power-edits would be difficult to do, and I think this first time director did a credible job.