Lenny Brown is a real-estate hustler looking to strike it rich. He is married to Linda, a paralegal and amateur dancer. The two are poor in money but rich in love. Linda vows to stick with her husband until she "falls off the earth." He moves to California and goes to work for Max Sherman, a prosperous businessman, selling lucrative investments in tax shelters. Everything is suddenly first-class for Lenny and his wife and they enjoy a very lavish lifestyle. However tax laws abruptly change and they find themselves $700,000 in debt. They become increasingly desperate, worsened by a friend Joel Miller who turns them on to cocaine for "a boost." Lenny and Linda both become addicted. They lose their home, car and jobs. Linda becomes pregnant, but falls and suffers a miscarriage after using cocaine. Lenny's life unravels rapidly as cocaine addictiongets the better of him. He gets clean temporarily and conceives one last great business opportunity. However due to anxiety his addiction reasserts itself and he irrationally blows the deal in a fit of anger. This culminates in Lenny severely beating Linda and putting her in the hospital. She is protected from Lenny while recovering and finally breaks with him permanently. She later falls for the doctor who is treating her. As the end credits roll, we see Lenny still using cocaine in his filthy apartment. He has been relating his tale to a visiting New York friend, blaming others for his failures, and is reduced to a babbling shell of himself.
The Boost earned mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half of a possible four stars in a Dec. 28, 1988 Chicago Sun-Times review, calling the film "one of the most convincing and horrifying portraits of drug addictionI've ever seen." Leonard Maltin was not so kind, however, giving the film only one-and-a-half of a possible four stars: "A misfire that's on the screen for 30 minutes before you even realize that it *is* anti-drug...As with Jack Nicholson in The Shining, it's hard to distinguish the 'before' Lenny from the 'after'."
