User Reviews

Modest little movie that went almost unnoticed when released in 1988, it took in just under 1 million dollars in total ticket sales. The movie "The Boost" is about as powerful in it's message about the destructive nature of drugs, legal and illegal, as the film "Days of Wine and Roses" was some 25 years earlier about the evils of alcoholism.

Down and out in New York City salesman Lenny Brown, James Woods, gets his big chance when real-estate tycoon Max Sherman, Steven Hill, takes notice of his innocent and boyish ability to charm people, that Max's associates didn't. Giving Lenny him a chance to show his stuff Max gives him a top job as a salesman for his firm back on the west coast. Lenny and his wife Linda, Sean Young, leave for L.A with a home and swimming pool a leased luxury Mercedes and high paying job there waiting for them. Lenny is easily up to the task in getting clients to buy Max's real-estate and within a year has worked himself up to become the most productive salesman in the real-estate business in L.A. It's then that things begin to go sour and Lenny just isn't up to the task of facing and dealing with them.

Making most of his sales due to tax shelters and right off the US Congress unexpectedly votes to close them putting the real-estate market into a tailspin as well as everyone, like Max & Lenny,behind the eight ball and in the red. Lenny for his part wasn't that economical with his money and not only spent it as fast as he earned it he also went hundred of thousands of dollars in debt expecting his future sales in real-estate to eventually pay them off. Broke out of a job and with no money to pay off his bills Lenny, as well as Linda, turn to the only thing that can make them forget their problems cocaine.

Gripping and disturbing film that doesn't have an happy ending with Lenny Brown blowing his whole life, and wife, away as he blows and gulps himself into oblivion on lines of coke and bottles of Quaaludes.

Top-notch performances by both James Woods and Sean Young as a young yuppie couple who get caught up with the wild and depressing times of the high flying and spending 1980's and crash from it's excesses in both money and personal, as well as private, entertainment. The movie ends with Lenny now totally hooked, and wiped out, on drugs talking to Ned, John Rothman,a NY Times reporter that he first met at the beginning of the film in New York City. Spilling his guts out in what looks more like an opium den then a one room apartment Lenny could only hope that Ned would write his story and have it published in the Times. His sad plight may very well help future Lenny's and Linda's from sharing the same fate.

P.S the film "The Boost" had actress Amanda Blake, who played Kitty on the 1950's & 60's TV Western "Gunsmoke", as Barbara in it as a washed up former showgirl and madam who, like Lenny, threw her life career and savings away by getting addicted to drugs. It turned out to be Amanda's last appearance as an actress on TV or in the movies as she died less then a year, on August 16, 1989, after the film was released.

The message of The Boost is a good one but the execution comes off as high camp. Everything is so over the top it's hard to imagine that the filmmakers ever tried to make a serious message movie.

The film's premise has James Woods, a high pressure salesman, and his wife Sean Young, hitting hard times and turning to cocaine.

Much like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, I find it hard to tell the difference between the "before" and "after" James Woods. He starts off as a psychotic madman and becomes a DRUG CRAZED psychotic madman overnight, basically the same guy!

It's all fun and games until Woods has an overdose, giving the director an excuse to show him urinate all over himself! Thanks for that image, Mr. director!

He and Young then go out looking for coke and stumble upon a dead guy with a missing eyeball, scaring these two straight for awhile anyway!

Coke comes back with a vengeance and we're subjected to the disturbing sight of a very pregnant Sean Young taking a nasty fall down the beach front equivalent of The Exorcist stairs!

It's not over yet! Woods switches from coke to quaaludes and turns into a couch potato, that is until an aged whore introduces him to crack. He then proceeds to slap his wife and come up with the greatest comeback plan ever devised!

Everything about this film moves so fast that it appears like the movie's editor was snorting cocaine too.

Directed by Vision Quest director, Harold Becker, The Boost is a fairly disturbing, though sometimes corny, illustration of the rise and fall of the late 80s yuppie--who's downfall usually came (at least in movies like these) from a coke habit. (See Bright Lights, Big City, Clean & Sober, and Less Than Zero...although the latter is more disturbing in it's original form as Easton's novel).

This is the story about the tragic downfall of Lenny Brown (James Woods), a regular guy with a knack as a salesman who seems to falter in, I suppose, trying to impress his wife, Linda (Sean Young) that he is not going to be a struggling salesman his whole life. Opportunity presents himself when a wealthy real-estate speculator (in a business that is mostly a scam--selling property to the filthy rich for the purpose of a tax write-off) and Lenny Brown proves to his trusting boss, Max (Stephen Hill), that he is good at what he does. With his new job, comes a new life for Lenny and Linda, one with the luxuries of fast money and fast living. And with it, a rude awakening.

Linda grows bored and skeptical of the new life, particularly when money is all Lenny talks about. Just like every party, it soon comes to an end, and when there is a chance that the tax shelter will be closed, Lenny's job is at risk. He's blown too much money already to just sit on his hands and wait for things to pick up. But, he's strapped for cash, gets fired from his job after his boss discovers he's been stealing, and there'll be no easy solution to his dilemma since he's adopted a new coke habit. He and Linda, both.

It's hard for reality to kick in. For Linda, it takes a while, but for Lenny, one failure after another, taking him farther and farther away from the high-life he intended to someday return to, he never seems to recover. After a while, he just becomes pathetic, and incapable of really fixing himself up, although it seemed like for a while, he could. These are the powerful moments in the film, that there seems like nothing that could ever pull Lenny out of his slump, no matter how hard he tries. It's one bad circumstance after another and Lenny just keeps giving in, just a little more, just for that one "boost", to help him out, all the while ignoring that it is exactly what keeps him sinking deeper and deeper into a hole he's gotten himself so far into, he's never going to recover. The final scene makes this very clear as he joins the ranks of an insolvent coke dealer, mumbling about his wife, who had long ago left him.

There are some cornier moments written into the film, particularly towards the beginning when we must see Linda and Lenny in their more romantic, newlywed sentiment. Some of Lenny's dialog in particular, seems a bit ridiculous, too, especially in his moments of grandeur. It does take until about half-way in the film to make the point, of the misery of addiction, very clear and very disturbing.

The Boost is the yuppie meeting the inevitable fate of his dystopia.

My gosh, this movie was nothing more than filmmaking by numbers. Struggling salesman can't make a go of it in New York, mentor with a heart of gold takes him under his wing, struggling salesman moves to California and makes it big, then loses it big, then bounces back with the simple life, then hits rock bottom trying to get back to the top. I don't think I can remember any part of the plot that took more than five seconds to develop. Case in point (spoiler?): When the John Kapelos character calls to say he and his girlfriend were coming to Santa Cruz to visit, and James Woods says there's practically no chance he would come, you knew with 100% certainty they were coming in the next scene or two.

On the other hand, Sean Young sure looked good.

An interesting movie, particularly if you enjoy seeing someone suffer even more than you.

The tale is a familiar one. Ambitious salesman has devoted wife whom he loves. He gets into making money -- big money. Mercedes, a modest multi-million dollar house in a fashionable section of Los Angeles. Magnums of rare champagne at fancy restaurants. Half a million non-refundable dollars invested in real estate in Cabo, where they serve, in Sybaritic establishments, elegantly prepared and formally presented authentic Mexican dishes made entirely of ingredients from cans of Rosarita products.

But the sales business hits a bump. Not a bottomless pit, just a kind of tombe. Down in the dumps, the salesman takes some cocaine to get a temporary boost. His wife advises him devotedly, "Why don't we get out of here? Can we just stay home and talk?" But his career continues to drop erratically downward into debt and degradation. He talks his devoted wife into trying cocaine. (She stares at the apparatus and asks, "Is that what I think it is?") Pretty soon they're doing several lines a day. He begins to slap her around, though she's pregnant now. (One guess at the fate of the fetus.) He spazzes out on some bad street s***. He humiliates himself in a public place. When he spills his coke on the floor he throws himself on his knees and begins sniffing furiously at the shag like a coyote in a garbage dump. They find a dead body on their doorstep. Their dog runs away. That kind of thing. I forget the end, but I suppose there was an epiphany. Something along the lines of "Money Doesn't Mean Everything," or, "Just say no to drugs," or both.

In order to fully appreciate this film you have to perform a thought experiment. Think of the salesman, James Woods, the hypomanic, speech-pressured human-perpetual-motion machine. Got the image? Good.

Now imagine James Woods on coke.

If you've seen "Days of Wine and Roses" you've got a good idea of what this one is like, a kind of "Days of Coke and Roses." Did Ben Stein really write this thing? Did Darryl Poinicsan do the screenplay? Not that it's insultingly bad. It's just that it's so thoroughly pedestrian. Years ago, before anyone knew anything about drugs, I kept running into plants in Pago Pago that people said were magic "koka". I collected an armload of leaves, made an infusion of them, and applied the stuff to open sores and sometimes asked people to drink it. Nobody's pain went away and nobody got high, although I had my notebook at the ready. As I was told later, they weren't coca plants but cocoa plants. Humped by a single whimsical orthomeme and a complete ignorance of cultigens.

Fairly compelling movie, scripted by Darryl Ponicsan from a book by none other than Ben Stein, is overall worth catching if for no other reason than to see the always excellent James Woods deliver another intense performance. He plays Lenny Brown, a hotshot salesman recruited by businessman Max Sherman (Steven Hill of the 'Law & Order' TV series) to sell real estate in California. Lenny has great success selling tax shelter investment deals to various people, but when the tax laws are changed, this marks the beginning of a sharp decline for Lenny. He ends up with very big money problems, and to try to forget his problems, he decides to start snorting cocaine and popping Quaaludes. As Lenny's situation just grows increasingly more grim and untenable, it becomes harder and harder for his wife Linda (Sean Young), an occasional user, to stand by him.

Were it not for an actor of Woods's caliber, one may find it not too easy to sympathize with his character. As it is, Leonard Maltins' guide to movies points out that there's no major difference in Lenny before and after his drug addiction begins. Still, director Harold Becker, who'd previously worked with Woods on "The Onion Field" and "The Black Marble", does manage to keep you watching through all of the melodrama that develops. The film may be most notable for the off screen drama involving co-stars Woods and Young, but on screen they work together well enough. She's not exactly his match as an actor, but does look beautiful at all times. Hill is a standout in the decent supporting cast including John Kapelos, Kelle Kerr, John Rothman, Amanda Blake (in her final feature film), Grace Zabriskie, and an uncredited John Philbin. The music by Stanley Myers is one worthy component. In the end, it *is* commendable that the filmmakers are willing to get as grim as they do get, with seemingly no hope in sight.

As a cautionary tale, this works to a degree, although the Maltin review is also right when it says that the film goes on for quite a bit before it becomes clear that's it's about dependency on drugs. It's an okay movie, with Woods raising the rating a bit by himself.

Six out of 10.

Salesman Lenny Brown (Woods) is fast losing his knack of selling the proverbial ice cream to Eskimos. Given a chance to shine in California by a philanthropic entrepreneur, Brown and his wife Linda (Young) live the high life off tax shelter investments; a fortune they lose when the federal government changes the tax laws.

Seven hundred thousand dollars in the red, and in need of a 'boost', the yuppies without portfolio begin to hoover vast quantities of Colombian marching powder up their hooters, until they find themselves with rather hungry monkeys on their back. After briefly cleaning up, Linda's coke-induced miscarriage sees Lenny once more careering like a pinball between uppers and downers. Living purgatory follows.

A contemporary take on Reefer Madness, with perverse echoes of Albert Brooks' Lost In America, The Boost was overshadowed on release by tabloid revelations concerning an alleged affair between Woods and Young, and their tumultuous falling out. Woods, then engaged to horse trainer Sarah Owen (now his ex-wife), reputedly slapped a $2 million lawsuit on his spurned co-star for "emotional harassment" during filming, citing Fatal Attraction-style late-night phone calls to his fiancée and, in one noteworthy incident, reputedly leaving a mutilated baby doll on his and Owen's doorstep.

Ironically, the lack of chemistry between the supposedly loving leads is one of the more depressing aspects of this latter-day exploitation flick - the only real passion Woods demonstrates towards Young is when he's kicking her around the room. The script too is hilariously dreadful, perhaps mitigating Young's near-comatose performance when given howlers like "stay with me - 'til I fall off the Earth" to emote. Further, given Woods' edgy dramatic personae, his jittery descent loses all credibility when actually he looked that way to begin with.

Ultimately, The Boost must be seen in context: in the 21st Century cocaine use is ubiquitous. However, in 1988, with America still embroiled in an unwinnable "war on drugs", the very fibre of the nation looked to be in peril - hence one of the most hellish - and for that read hysterical - depictions of drug-abuse.

Would you nominate an actor for best performance in a movie where he is the only good thing about it? That's the question I have about James Wood in this disappointing movie about drug abuse among the successful business people of real estate where he is incredible and mesmerizing to watch but the script surrounding him is meandering and possibly the reason why the movie has self-destructed like its two leading characters.

At the beginning of the film, Woods is seeing trying to illicit business down near Wall Street, passive aggressively self-serving but obviously ambitious and determined. With New York a hard City to conquer in the real estate world, he decides to pack up wife Sean Young and move to the less hectic world of Los Angeles where she can move from executive assistant to pursuing a ballet career. Even there however, the high-strung world it is too much for these young upstarts to handle, and they end up in a world of drug abuse which includes freebasing.

Woods has a sudden overdose, one of the scariest examples of that on screen, but he is cured way too fast, not a fault of his performance but the movie. I have witnessed such an overdose occur and they do not get up and walk away within 24 hours. Their business world which leads to a lavish social life is a pretentious environment for a young married couple to try to achieve success in, and the people surrounding them are completely amoral. Young becomes addicted as well, but she never convinces in that area. In fact, she barely seems to be giving me performance rather than just walking through the whole thing.

This is a very frustrating movie because it could have been very helpful to young people trying to climb the ladder of success to know what to avoid and certainly the type of people to not become involved with. Woods is mesmerizing, and at times, his performance is extremely scary. But a movie like this does not depend on the excellence of one person. There must be more then just one element to make it memorable. This isn't even camp so it can't even be called the "Valley of the Dolls" of the 80's. Woods is the reason why I give this a 3 out of 10 stars, and as a result, it still Remains probably one of the worst films of 1988 not to mention the 80's.