Hop Dreams

That grin is made infinitely more acceptable, however, by Veloz's committed cast. Stiller, sometimes appearing runtish and goaty, other times heroic and larger than life, can turn a scene on its head with the drop of his jaw. If Tom Hanks has become both Henry Fonda and Jack Lemmon, Ben Stiller has, within the past year, emerged as an ethnic version of the WASP jokers Hanks played 14 years ago, which is no small accomplishment.

As Sandra, the green-card British TV associate producer Jerry weds for money but with whom he ends up forming a more or less loving marriage, Elizabeth Hurley exudes her best Jackie Bisset cool. Her quinine wit and brunette vulnerability prevent her character from becoming just another British accent in heels. And amid fine sketch performances from Owen Wilson and Janeane Garofalo, the film's strongest support comes from Peter Greene as the ex-con Gus, a frightening, elemental apparition who materializes in a methadone-clinic parking lot to lure Jerry away from his halfhearted stab at sobriety and to the delirious highs of crack. Watching Greene's demented face appear in Jerry's car window - and later, listening to him pontificate in a diner - reminds us of the jolt we felt upon seeing Lee Marvin or Michael Madsen on the screen for the first time.

In what is bound to become the film's best-remembered scene, Gus suddenly leaps from the floor of a high-rise office under construction as if into thin air, only to bounce off its plate-glass window. He coaxes timid Jerry into joining him, and soon the two are testing the buckling window and the mad courage of their high. More than anything, this image of men, glass and sky captures the seductive rush of narcotics and the midnight sun they promise.