Spun is rapidly entertaining.by Anonymous

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October 27, 2006: Wow, I just viewed “Spun” the other night and I thought this movie was outrageous. This is sort of a guilt-pleasure movie but you want to take shower afterwards. “Spun” has an impressive cast of recognized actors. The film is, essentially, about a few days in the lives of a group of drug addicts. There is The Cook (Mickey Rourke, he truly makes this story worth watching), who makes the drug (speed) and sells it to Spider Mike (John Leguizamo), a dealer with a junkie girlfriend, Cookie (Mena Suvari, looking infinitely less attractive than she did in “American Beauty”). One of his clients is Ross (Jason Schwartzman), who does a lot of favours for The Cook and his girlfriend, Nikki (Brittany Murphy). I was surprised at how funny the film was at times. It doesn't drown us in anti-drug messages, nor does it become one of those, equally tedious, drug films where you feel like the sober driver at a drunken party. The humour is dark, certainly, but funny nevertheless. A lot of it comes from a subplot about Frisbee, Patrick Fugit, who is caught by a couple of TV policemen (Peter Stormare and Alexis Arquette) and is told he will be let off if he helps them get Spider-Mike. I will only say of the resulting sequence that he does it with all the subtlety of an undercover policeman with his badge stuck to his forehead. This is a film with a lot of energy, that seems, like its characters, not entirely sure where it is going, but determined to get there, and quickly. Although I am sure it is boring to be surrounded by people on speed when you are sober, this film almost makes you feel like you are on speed too. The director, Jonas Åkerlund, has directed music videos in the past, and it shows in his impatient filming style, as he plays around with animation, speeded-up camerawork and such like. I'm not recommending the film for its style though, although I am sure it is the best way this material could get to the screen. I am recommending it because I liked the main characters, which I think will stick in my head for much longer than the animated sex scenes or the split screens. I can imagine an entire film about The Cook and Nikki, or Spider Mike and Cookie, or even just Ross, who absentmindedly keeps leaving a girl handcuffed to his bed for hours/days. What makes “Spun” better than those hypothetical films is that it puts the characters into their own little community, and we feel as if we are watching their everyday, speeded up, sleepless lives. Simply amazing.

This review was written about the DVD Wide Screen edition.

Hard to call.by Anonymous

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March 22, 2005: I liked the way this movie was shot, it made the watcher slightly uncomfortable to watch, the potrayal of methanphetamine users was a little far fetched, I have experienced many different people from this lifestyle, and none of which are as on edge as the people in this flick, close, but not quite.