Withdrawal scenes were unconvincing with poor music

If Jason Patric's character was injecting heroin the movie only showed his attention to that drug once while all of the other buys were everything from pills, cannabis, and speed which ostensibly were the products of that day and place. If he'd become an opiate abuser his problems would be far more severe than the way it was portrayed. Although the movie made for nice theater the sordid nature of that particular avenue was treated in a similar way to the way James Woods played a cocaine addict in "The Boost", and that is very Hollywood. Even though it was hard to watch "Bad Lieutenant" because of its sordid treatment, I though that movie portrayed the abject base degradation that arises from descent into addiction much more adeptly than the way it was handled here. Patric's cold-turkey scene was weakly done and the music selected to embellish his misery was very poorly selected. However, I enjoyed the film, only because the actors gave nice performances and the side story with the Confidential Informant was probably the best thing about the entire project. Max Perlich was on top of his game at that time, and his part in the story should have been handled differently since suicide is a little drastic and his role in the trials would have made for much better courtroom drama since the court scenes were so weakly done.