JOHNNY-DEPP.org

Plot Summary

The film opens to a young George (Jesse James) and his parents Fred (Ray Liotta) and Ermine (Rachel Griffiths). Fred files for bankruptcy and loses everything, but tries to convey to George that money is not important.

As an adult, George (Johnny Depp) moves to Southern California with his friend “Tuna” (Ethan Suplee) and they plan to earn a living by selling marijuana with the help of George’s girlfriend, Barbara Buckley (Franka Potente), an airline stewardess who introduces them to Derek Foreal (Paul Reubens), the main dealer. With Derek’s help, George and Tuna make a lot of money. Kevin Dulli (Max Perlich), a college student back in Boston, visits them and tells them of the enormous demand for pot in Boston. With Barbara’s help, they start bringing the drugs to Boston.

As the demand grows, they decide to start buying the drugs directly from Mexico with the help of a few Mexican drug lords. George is caught in Chicago trying to import 660 pounds of marijuana and is sentenced to two years. After unsuccessfully trying to plead his innocence by reciting the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe”), George skips bail to take care of Barbara, who is suffering from, and eventually succumbs to, cancer.

While hiding from the authorities, George visits his parents back in Massachusetts. While he is having a heart to heart talk with his father, George’s mother calls the police, who come and arrest him.

George is now sentenced to 26 months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. His cellmate Diego Delgado (Jordi Molla) has contacts in the Medellin cocaine cartel and convinces George to help him go into business. Upon his release from prison, George violates his parole conditions and heads down to Cartagena, Colombia to meet up with Diego. They meet with Caesar Rosa to negotiate the terms for smuggling 15 kilograms to establish “good faith”. As the smuggling operation grows, Diego gets arrested, leaving George to find a way to sell 50 kilos (110 lbs) and get the money in time. George reconnects with Derek in California, and the two successfully sell all 50 kilos in 36 hours, amassing a $1.35 million profit. George is then whisked off to Medellin, Colombia, where he finally meets Pablo Escobar (Cliff Curtis) who agrees to go into business with them. With the help of main middleman Derek, the pair becomes Escobar’s top US importer. However, Diego resents George for keeping Derek’s identity secret and pressures George to reveal his connection. George eventually discovers that Diego has betrayed him by cutting him out of the connection with Derek. Inspired by the birth of his daughter and chastened by a drug-related collapse, George severs his relationship with the cartel and vows to leave the drug business forever.

All goes well with George’s newfound civilian life for five years, until his wife Mirtha (Penelope Cruz) organizes a 38th birthday party for him. Many of his former drug associates attend, including Derek, who reveals that Diego eventually cut him out as well. The party is raided by police and George is arrested. Following his conviction, he becomes a fugitive. Meanwhile, his Panamanian bank accounts have been seized. One night, he and Mirtha get into a loud, public fight, and she tells police that he has stashed a kilo of cocaine in his trunk. He is sent to jail for three years, during which Mirtha divorces him and takes custody of their nine year old daughter, Kristina Sunshine Jung (Emma Roberts). On his release he finds himself struggling to keep his relationship with his daughter on good terms.

George promises Kristina a vacation in California and seeks one last deal to garner enough money for the trip. George completes a deal with former accomplices but learns too late that the deal had been set up by the FBI and DEA. George is sentenced to 60 years at Otisville Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He explains in the end that neither the sentence nor the betrayal bothered him, but that he can never forgive himself for breaking a promise to his daughter.

While in prison, George requests a furlough to see his dying father. His unforgiving mother denies the request, saying a visit would only upset George’s father. He is given a tape recorder to record a final message to his father. In the message, George recounts his memories of working with his father, his run-ins with the law, and finally, too late, his understanding of what his father meant when he said that money is not “real”.

The film closes with George as an old man in prison, imagining that his daughter finally comes to visit him. She slowly fades away as a guard calls for George. The film concludes with notes indicating that Jung’s sentence will not expire until 2015, and that his daughter has yet to visit him (his daughter did finally visit him a year after the film’s release[2]). The film’s final image is a photograph of the actual George Jung which lasts through most of the credits.

by Wikipedia