I wish Jason Patric (Downloading Nancy, Sleepers) had landed a leading role on a gritty premium cable detective show (think of a darker True Detective that spanned multiple seasons with the same cast). His two best roles are those of an undercover narcotics officer willing to bend the law for the greater good. The first is the underrated Narc, a 2002 film that paired him opposite Ray Liotta. Eleven years earlier, Lili Fini Zanuck’s Rush further defined him as one of the most talented up-and-coming actors, following roles in The Lost Boys, The Beast, and After Dark, My Sweet.

In Rush, Patric stars as Jim Raynor, an undercover cop operating a drug bust in 1970s rural Texas. He hand-picks his partner, Kristen Cates (Jennifer Jason Leigh – The Jacket, Single White Female), an ambitious, idealistic, and aspiring rookie police officer. Whether she is ready for such an assignment seems of little concern to his boss, Larry Dodd ( Sam Elliott – A Star Is Born, Tombstone), who is feeling the heat from his bosses for Jim’s inability to infiltrate nightclub owner Will Gaines’s (Gregg Allman) formidable, intrinsic drug ring, by any means necessary.

To disguise their cover, they do what many in their situation, more often than not, have to do. They use their product. Not doing so will show the sellers and buyers around them that something is unusual and could cause alarm. It is either injecting the drugs or risking blowing their cover. Jim demonstrates this to Kristen and isn’t subtle about it. He shows her how to apply a tourniquet to the arm for the vein to pop out and not hesitate to use the syringe to inject the drug. Even a moment’s hesitation could raise a flag to the drug lords that something isn’t right. Jim is forceful, but he has to be. In doing so, he brings Kristen into a world she didn’t necessarily ask to be in, but that envelopes her immediately. Operating off a true story, Zanuck shows both the prowess and immediacy of heroin addiction. After trying the drug just a few times, both become full-fledged addicts, so we start to wonder if they are still cops trying to take down a powerful drug lord or using the unsuccessful undercover operation to feed their disease.

This case is of particular interest to Dodd and his boss, Donald Nettle (Tony Frank), because Gaines is responsible for getting the daughter of a reputable community member hooked on the product. “By any method necessary” becomes the motto for taking Gaines down, regardless of evidence or guilt, raising philosophical questions such as “Does the end justify the means” or “This is for the greater good,” with those asking the questions being the same people answering them.

Rush is raw. Zanuck barely lets us grasp for breath with her cheerless, heartbreaking story. She helps us understand and sympathize with our two leads, though I would have loved to see this story stretched out into a television miniseries. We could have watched them dip into their addiction and madness in a far more prolonged period, which could have made us understand how some of their more brash or rushed decisions resulted from their addiction’s grip. Rush is a story that needed to be told, but also one that needed time to be fleshed out. That could have worked as a five-part premium cable series. However, in 1991, that wasn’t being done, leaving this particular criticism without a rectifiable solution other than a three-hour-plus movie, which wouldn’t have worked for a film of this gravity or somberness.

Patric and Jason Leigh give powerhouse performances. Their chemistry is electric, and we feel for each of them as they tussle with their heroin addiction and the violent effects that it has on them. Max Perlich (Blow, The Grey) is cast perfectly as Walker, a gentle, easygoing petty car thief, loyal to his friends but suddenly forced to become a snitch, with Jim and Kristen threatening him with life in prison for the crimes he’s committed if he doesn’t cooperate after he tells the undercover detectives that some believe Jim to be a narc. The transformation of his character, torn between staying loyal to his friends or spending a life behind bars, is as strong as Jim and Kristen’s, despite his much more limited screen time.

Narc isn’t the best movie on drug addiction. However, it’s one of the better ones when it deals with the morality of genuinely good people battling the demons of an illicit substance that has gained a stranglehold on their lives, so much so that it drove them to paranoia, operating outside of the jurisdiction of their assignment, and pitting forces against each other and misusing trusted resources for personal gain (or loss).

Plot 8/10
Character Development 9/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9/10
Directing  9/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 8/10
Hook and Reel 9.5/10
Universal Relevance 10/10
89.5%

A-

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• Narc
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• The Departed
• Blow
• Traffic
• Dopesick (miniseries on Hulu)