Very slowly the opioid crisis has made its way into film. First, as usual, through addict stories (Beautiful Boy, Ben Is Back). But now we’re reaching the institutions, in this particular case, the police, academia and Big Pharma.
Crisis is a competent film: It moves fast in spite of having three intersecting stories, the acting is mostly competent (a terrible turn by Veronica Ferres being the exception) and gets the point across: Corporate negligence is as much as fault as the kingpins pushing the stuff. But the film is as broad as it gets and you can see every major beat coming from a mile away.
The three plotlines in order of interest:
- A university teacher (Gary Oldman) hired to rubberstamp a new drug grows a conscience and sounds the alarm. The corporation behind it (NOT Purdue Pharma, where did you get that idea?) puts all its might to pressure the academic to sign up on the opioid, never mind it may create dependency.
- An undercover cop (Armie Hammer) tries to bust a traffic ring of oxy in Quebec (the use of “tabernac” is weirdly thrilling). While trying to keep his cover, he must also stop his out-of-rehab sister (Lily-Rose Depp) from relapsing.
- A former user who has managed to get her life back (Evangeline Lilly) investigates the death of her teenage son. At first sight it seems like an accidental OD, but she suspects foul play.
While we’ve seen Hammer and Lilly’s character arcs before, writer/director Nicolas Jarecki (Arbitrage) peppers their storylines with enough factoids to keep things interesting, if not quite gripping. The corporate storyline—featuring Oldman, Luke Evans and Greg Kinnear—could have anchored a whole movie. Granted, white men in boardrooms is seldom cinematic, but in this particular case (a social crisis propelled by Big Pharma) seems appropriate.
About the elephant in the room, it wasn’t an issue for me at least. It would be unfair to review a movie involving dozens of people on the actions of a single individual outside work. 2.5/5 prairie dogs.
Crisis is now available in VOD.