Amazon.com video review:
The pre-Titanic Leonardo
DiCaprio stars as Jim Carroll, the poet and musician who spent much of
his adolescence addicted to heroin and shooting hoops with fellow
Catholic high school kids. As a biography, the film doesn't amount to
more than the sum of its gritty scenes of smack use, violence,
perversions (poor Bruno Kirby plays a lecherous coach who comes on to
young Jim), and the usual scream-and-puke dramas that go along with a
cold-turkey session. Director Scott Kalvert doesn't seem to realize
that most people don't know who Carroll is and therefore can't
possibly understand why they should care about his gutterball
youth. DiCaprio, having nowhere to go with his performance but
maintain Carroll's tailspin, is boring and redundant. Some kind of
allusion to the literary and rock & roll life that follows the mess
we're watching might have been helpful. The DVD release offers the
choice of a full or widescreen (letterbox) picture, plus
interviews. --Tom Keogh
