Cocaine Angel

Whew, a tough one. but i swear i couldnt get up, couldnt move.needed to see it thru. very scary, very realistic, very sad. definitely a good flick to show teens. if that doesnt teach you something, nothing will! recommend!

I watched this film on a recommendation for its gritty portrayal of a cocaine addict and the people met during the descent. As real a depiction of actual a. drug usage b. user habits c. desperate, unimaginable situations that HAPPEN and d. the mental pattern of someone who recognizes what they gave up to have it.

As is mentioned in most reviews, some scenes are heart-wrenching, some are of graphic drug use (as graphic as drug use gets), a lot are both. This is a sad movie and it's filled with sad, pathetic characters. All are acted to PERFECTION, including most of the bit parts. The lead is astonishingly good at being a cokehead and displays constantly the little things that change about one's speech and thoughts as they lose touch with reality. If you've known a cokehead, you will watch this movie and say "a-ha, I remember why I hated that guy".

With a tragic antihero on camera in every scene of the movie, this is a very personal affair and shows everything he might do in a day (including using the toilet, random, meaningless encounters, etc.). I've yet to see a movie that spent this few words expressing this much personality (or ruins of one, really).

I thought the ending was particularly good and fit the story well as far as it parallels real life stories, as what you see in the last few scenes is what you're expected to believe is the main character's final stage in life (and presumably, not a particularly long one, depending entirely on what you think this man will do when he wakes the following day, which on its own is reason enough to watch this movie).

While someone else mentioned recovering users might have trouble watching this film, it is NOT because of the graphic drug use, it IS because they will be steadily reminded of the consequences of their own past use, which sucks, but is about as good a booster shot for not-ever-doing-drugs-againism as one could ask for. Enjoy...

We have seen it all before. We have seen it done masterfully; Requiem for a Dream, Half-Nelson, etc... We have seen it done abysmally; too many to mention. A basically likable character with once good intentions dives/falls into the depths of addiction and the world of horror that inevitably comes with it. Cocaine Angel does not have a shockingly different story to tell. Scott, a once seemingly gainfully, if not boringly employed 20-something, fully entrenched in his cocaine and alcohol addictions, struggles his way through his life in small town Florida. The story is simple, but the telling raises this film into the ranks of its austere predecessors. It takes place over just a few days of Scott's life. They are not the first few days in his downward spiral, and they are not the last. Cocaine Angel is a slice of life, in the most poetic sense. This slice is a metaphor for not only Scott's whole existence but a metaphor for the nature of addiction itself. Damien Lahey's portrayal of Scott, while on one hand almost uncomfortably truthful, is peppered with surprisingly poignant beauty. One moment Lahey as Scott is all ticks and paranoia, fiending for a fix, the next he enthralls with a heart-breaking allegory of his past. Soon to be released for DVD distribution, Cocaine Angel is a testament to true Independent Film.

While it missed a golden opportunity to be called "Cocaingel," Michael Tully's directorial debut Cocaine Angel is a low-key, observant drama showing a couple days in the life of a helpless cocaine junkie, as he lumbers from friends' drug-infested lofts, to liquor stores, to the polluted streets to fulfill his accursed habit. The junkie is Scott (the film's writer Damian Lahey), who resides in Jacksonville, Florida, more concerned about where his next fix is going to come from rather than caring for his daughter or trying to find work. He barely has a couple bucks in his wallet, which are eventually spent on a liquor store's cheapest pint of whiskey, and, throughout the course of the film, whether it be through Tully's directorial aesthetics or through the character's speech and mannerisms, we begin to see the cocaine consumer our anti-hero and witness the demise of a character we questioned ever rose in the first place.

Tully chooses to capture Cocaine Angel in a gritty, ugly style, which is only germane to the subject matter all the more. The film is dark, often low-lit but not indistinguishable, and visually murky in its cinematography (done by the likes of Shawn Lewallen). Despite its visually ugly qualities, there is a beauty in the unabashed naturalism in the way the film is photographed, never ceasing to show the character and his addiction in the reprehensible light they both deserve to be shown in. The film's aesthetic is greatly reminiscent of a home movie, only this is a home movie virtually no one would want to reflect on.

Most importantly, however, is that Cocaine Angel gets details right above everything. It is the barrage of quiet, subtle little details, like the dirtiness of the cup Scott drinks out of, the dreadlocks and the unkempt look boasted by "Hurricane Mike" (Richard Dawson), the film's main drug dealer, and the conversations had between Scott, Hurricane Mike, and Mary (Kelly Forester), another "friend" of Scott's.

Tully holds nothing back in his focus of a loner drug dealer, and at just seventy-two minutes long, the thin but competently made Cocaine Angel races past, but not in a sense that it's in one ear and out the other. This is a film that, for some, will linger, like a high or a pint of Early Times, with its effect on a viewer ranging from a passing glance to one that will lurk in ones mind for days to come. Consider me the latter, as I now recall the famous lines of Johnny Cash, "lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be."

Starring: Damian Lahey, Kelly Forester, and Richard Dawson. Directed by: Michael Tully.

"Cocaine Angel" is a difficult film to watch and a difficult film to review. Therein lies both its virtue and its short-coming. This is a rough, gritty, honest portrayal of the life of crack addicts and cocaine junkies – not to mention your assorted pill-poppers – that opens very graphically and shocks you into their world. Writer and main actor Damian Lahey takes you places that most "average" people don't want to go or even visit for an afternoon, the world of people whose only thought is their next high. These people are rude, ungrateful of any help offered, spiraling toward the abyss fully conscious of the trajectory.

For anyone who has lived in urban or suburban American and known anyone who was a serious substance abuser, the ring of truth tolls throughout this feature film. That is what makes it such a difficult film to watch and to review. While admiring the honesty portrayed on screen, one cannot but come away from this film feeling soiled and depressed.

The film is the debut directorial effort of Michael Tully and made the festival run from Rotterdam to South-by-Southwest (SXSW,) Jacksonville (FL) where the film is set, Sarasota (FL) and the Raindance film festival. My fellow film reviewers, like Dennis Lim at the Village Voice and the un-bylined reviewer at Filmmaker Magazine have hailed the work as a "minor masterpiece." I shan't go that far. I will quote Filmmaker Magazine's take on the piece though. They wrote, "…caked in legitimate, unforgettable grime, one that makes similar Hollywood efforts seem as fake as an orange juice commercial." No argument from this quarter with that assessment.

This is an unremittingly grim picture of the addicted with no holds barred. The few bits of humor in it are left-handed. For example, Lahey limps through the film wearing one shoe, while his other foot is bare - except for a bloody makeshift bandage he wears as he hobbles and bobbles through his so-called life. And then there is Mary, his putative lover, the thematic cocaine angel of the title. She is a sometimes hooker, hoping to get back to see her daughter who lives in another state. Mary is harsh, crude, angry and unrepentant. We are led to believe that there is some love between she and her loser boyfriend, Scott, portrayed by Lahey, but the signs of love are few and far between.

I don't do spoilers in reviews. I leave it to you to decide if you'd like to see this film and how the tale plays out. Follow its tawdry twists and turns if you dare look into the dark world of addiction. Don't expect to come away from it without being a bit taken aback and chastened.

By Rod Amis a CinemActivist