Rush

[pro-bassoonist]

Lili Fini Zanuck's Rush (1991) has received a preliminary release date: September 27.

The Washington Post:

Taking a courageous cue from "Drugstore Cowboy," in which drugs are actually acknowledged to be enjoyable, "Rush" intoxicates the head for a while. But it peaks way before the movie's over. You're caught in a slow but steady decline, an unwanted comedown.

This adaptation of Texan ex-narc Kim Wozencraft's novel is about the dubious moral game undercover cops play to bring in the dealers. When rookie Jennifer Jason Leigh partners up with veteran Jason Patric in the mid-1970s, she's given the score. It isn't enough to buy the drugs, Patric tells her. They have to actually do them so their suppliers don't get suspicious. In this world, everyone shoots up. Becoming a cop junkie is a regular occupational hazard. The ones left standing -- with a police badge in their hands -- are the good guys. Or are they?

On the plus side, there are great performances all around. Patric and Leigh make convincing undercover narcs caught in a bummer trip. Max Perlich (a "Drugstore Cowboy" performer) is tremendous as the smalltime hustler who befriends them. In his acting debut, Gregg Allman has a compelling presence as a suspected kingpin; so does Special K McCray as a pusher.

Debuting director Lili Fini Zanuck creates some memorably dramatic high points. There's a standout scene in which Leigh and Patric, posing as loving users, do business with McCray. He's a large, brown bear of a man, clutching a revolver that he pokes idly into his crotch. He mutters in an ursine mixture of sinister and sensual, demanding Patric shoot up in front of him. After Patric does so, he asks Leigh to do the same. She declines. He points the gun at her, and tells her no one leaves him alive without trying his wares. It's not enough that they buy, not even enough that they prove they're not the Heat. They have to convert.

"Oh yeah," he rumbles softly, as Patric shoots up. "Sweet heaven here we come. Check it out, check it out! . . . Pretty soon you're going to be feeling all unnecessary."

"Rush" only has one note to play with -- that Mephistophelean dilemma before our intrepid officers. Warnings about their moral descent are sign-posted from the very opening.

"It gets ugly, you know," Leigh's supervisor Sam Elliott warns her.

"Yeah, I know," says Leigh.

"No, you don't know," says Elliott. "You get ugly with it."

The warnings continue so often, you wonder if there's a real surprise coming: that Patric and Leigh will not become junkies. But no. Within minutes, Leigh is 'fessing up to pleasure for the dark side. "I liked being there with you," she tells Patric, "and I liked being scared."

Their mission is essentially to nab nightclub owner Allman. The detectives go about it by buying up drugs all around him, hoping to lure Allman into compromising business. It proves difficult; compromising has to come from other quarters. "Rush" soon becomes a predictable indictment of The System.

Blues great Eric Clapton provides a richly evocative score, but director Zanuck overuses it. In the second half of "Rush," his music fills every crack. The movie seems to consist only of drug-induced movie montages awash with music. After a while, that's enough to make you scream for the methadone of the Great Outside.

1. New Recruit
2. Tracks and Lines
3. Realization
4. Kristen and Jim
5. Preludin Fugue
6. Cold Turkey
7. Will Gaines
8. Help Me Up
9. Don't Know Which Way to Go - Eric Clapton and Willie Dixon
10. Tears in Heaven

Pro-B