Don't listen to the negative reviews

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It's 1971 American Northwest. Rob (Matt Dillon), his girlfriend Dianne (Kelly Lynch), his second Rick (James Le Gros) and Rick's girl Nadine (Heather Graham) are all drug addicts. They rob drugstores with well planned schemes. Federal agent Gentry (James Remar) stakes out the group waiting for them to slip up.Director Gus Van Sant brings a jazzy hypnotic sense to the feel of being on drugs. He infuses the movie with an off-center sense of humor. The four leads all contribute some great work. Matt Dillon is a terrific lead. Kelly Lynch is a perfect match. She has the same power without the manic personality of Dillon. James Le Gros is a great second and Heather Graham is build to be a victim in this movie.

From director Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), I am sure that I tried of few minutes of this film and got bored, but having remembered the title for so long I was definitely willing to give it more of a chance. Basically highly suspicious Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon) and his wife Dianne (Kelly Lynch) are drug addicts, and are love doing various pharmaceutical drugs, like dilaudid, morphine and cocaine, and keep their habit going they and another couple often steal from pharmacies. They are aware a police officer is getting too close for comfort for them, so they move their operation to another town, but it isn't long after doing this that one of the crew overdoses and dies. They unintentionally have checked into a hotel where a sheriff's convention is taking place, but they do have to move the body from out of the hotel room to into their car, they narrowly avoid getting caught doing this. Believing his warnings is what caused the incident Bob decides he does need help, but he is too scared to join any methadone or any kind of drug eliminating program. Worse comes when junkies he saw earlier ambush his apartment and try to score drugs, and having decided to go straight he doesn't have anything for them to take, so they beat up and then shoot him, but in the end he lives long enough for an ambulance to take him away. Also starring James Remar as Gentry, James Le Gros as Rick, Heather Graham as Nadine, Beah Richards as Drug Counselor, Grace Zabriskie as Bob's Mother and Max Perlich as David. Dillon does well as the junkie who finds it very difficult to let go of his addiction and then later to even try to kick it, I admit I didn't feel as enraptured in this story like I did with Trainspotting, but the drug taking culture is definitely emphasised, not in a judgemental way, and there is interesting provocative material, so all in all it is a worthwhile drama. Very good!

Watching a quartet of teenage junkies rob pharmacies and get high may not be everyone's idea of a good time. But director Gus Van Sant looks beyond the desperate urge for another fix and finds a good deal of insight into the addict's pursuit of slow death in the fast lane, with Matt Dillon giving a memorable performance as the leader of the sometimes comically pathetic outlaw gang. Van Sant's unflinching depiction of the junkie lifestyle is entirely sympathetic but totally unsentimental, showing the non-conformist need for a high without ever glamorizing the drug culture. The episodic story is set (and with good reason) in the year 1971, after the mysticism of experimentation had long since become the grim reality of addiction, but it loses some momentum after Dillon enters a rehabilitation clinic, at which point the film attempts to express verbally what it already proved it could show visually. But the script never sells out for any tidy moral lesson, and the presence of Beat Generation icon William Burroughs in a small but notable cameo role lends a measure of credibility to Van Sant's intentions.

Gus Van Sant continues to dissect the American myth with "Drugstore Cowboy", a film which finds a character called Bob (Matt Dillon) attempting to lift himself out of a lowly lifestyle composed primarily of drugs and theft.But the aim here is not only to paint a portrait of a life hopelessly dependent on (or enslaved to) chemical gratification, but to lay bare the fiction of self-determination, a myth in which many Americans deludedly believe. As Bob mournfully says, all he can do is "try his best and see what happens". His life is so far out of his hands that it is practically somebody else's life, a fact which he observes throughout the film."Drugstore Cowboy" ends on an ambiguous note. After much toil and many attempts to reform, Bob finds himself being rushed to a hospital in an ambulance. Whether he lives or dies is left up to the audience. His fate, as always, is in somebody else's (ours) hands.8/10 – Too familiar and conventional to be great, too honest to be dismissed as typical Hollywood fare. Worth one viewing.