"Addiction is an industry" - Crisis quick review

mcgrehan
Apr 6, 2021
2 min read

What is it?

"Crisis" tells the story of three people caught up in the opioid epidemic, aka, people being addicted to legal painkillers. Gary Oldman, a professor testing a new painkiller, Evangeline Lily, an ex-addict trying to find out what happened to her deceased son, and Armie Hammer, an undercover agent trying to bring down some drug dealers.

Quick Review

Inspired by true events, and is definitely a story about a topic that deserves to be told, but the film fails to live up to what it should be. The characters seem to make odd choices which are hard to believe they would actually make in real life, and seem to only happen so that the writer and director can create tension and conflict.

Gary Oldman and Evangeline Lily give terrific performances as usual, and if only they were given characters that made decisions that actually made sense. The pace of the film is out of whack, it goes for far too long for what’s actually happening in the film and it doesn’t quite know if it’s trying to be a hard hitting Spotlight-style expose on big pharma, or a run of the mill crime/gangster movie with shoot outs and excessively swearing and cartoonish villains (the male big bad/crime boss is called “Mother”, owns a restaurant where he conducts all his business and has stereotypical henchman/bullet fodder.

The stand out is Evangeline Lily, stepping up to a more meaty and emotional role than I’ve seen her do before. Overall, a passable film that you should catch on a streaming service when you/ve finished watching everything else.