Drugstore Cowboy: Critic Reviews

The film takes us so deeply into this shabby, transient world that we feel its texture -- both its scary thrills and its bleak, fatalistic uncertainty.

Ultimately it's Dillon who has the biggest score; he makes this stark trip a heady, hopeful one.

The performers make their affectlessness expressive.

The movie stars Matt Dillon, in one of the great recent American movie performances.

All the actors are used expertly, but it's Burroughs, cropping up near the end, who articulates the film's sociopolitical moral in a contemporary context.

No previous drug-themed film has the honesty or originality of Gus Van Sant's drama Drugstore Cowboy.

One of those cult classics well worth investigating even if you have never so much as smoked a cigarette in your life.

A frazzled, dangerous and dark comedy-drama.

Forthright junkie film.

Lyrically shot, this chronicle of a bunch of bumbling petty-criminals who steal pharmaceuticals is a tad too straightforward by Van Sant's standards, but the dialogue is funnt, the mood nonchalant, and Matt Dillon is terrific in the lead.

Though hardly earth-shakingly original, Van Sant's low-budget movie takes a cool, contemplative and sometimes comic look at American drug-culture.

A darkly funny, stylish, and realistic look at the world of drug addiction in 1971.

Certainly one of the best drug movies ever made.

One of the best movies ever made about characters who live on the fringes of society. Gus Van Sant establishes himself as a major talent with this one.

communicates its anti-drug message with a sense of humor and humanity