America’s Fentanyl Crisis Gets the Hollywood Thriller Treatment – ​​DNyuz

VENICE, Italy—Fentanyl addiction has gripped America. The U.S. State Department estimates that 70,000 people will die from fentanyl-related problems in 2023. The drug is difficult to trace at the border because of its chemical makeup and is significantly more potent than heroin. King IvoryWritten and directed by John Swab, takes its title from one of the street names for fentanyl. The film attempts to address the fentanyl crisis that has shaken the country—a noble cause indeed. Unfortunately, the film is both overlong and underdeveloped.

There are three converging storylines in King Ivorythat recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. One is about West (James Badge Dale), a cop who must defend Oklahoma from gun violence, along with his wife and two children. Then there’s Smiley (Ben Foster), a maximum-security inmate who earns his freedom through shocking acts. Finally, drug cartel leader Ramón Garza (Michael Mando) smuggles people from Mexico to Oklahoma, but he becomes the target of a police hunt when one of his routine trips goes horribly wrong.

The most intriguing plot involves Garza and the teenager he smuggled out of Mexico. The boy has ambitions to become an accountant (his mother hopes he will become a doctor) and his parents risk everything to get him there, offering the deed to their ranch to pay for him to cross the border. But once he gets there, he’s immediately thrown into the drug world, forced to drive from location to location selling fentanyl. Annoyingly, this thread has received almost no attention.

What gets the most attention is West and his family. His son Jack (Jasper Jones) rebels against his parents. He is performing poorly in school and much to his parents’ dismay, he has started using recreational drugs. The weakest part of King Ivorythe scenes with jack feel like they came out of an after school special. it’s a generic family drama full of archetypes of parents and sons.

As West, however, James Badge Dale is formidable. His physical prowess combines with his mental strength to provide a veneer of toughness. Yet Dale shows a tender side. He’s not just a cop, he’s a father, and he’s a very different person at home than he is at work. King Ivory The film runs for 130 minutes and features many different characters, but it’s West who gives us the deepest insight into how the fentanyl crisis has devastated so many communities.

With the exception of the West, the characters in King Ivory are rough sketches rather than human-like characters. People are reduced to their identities: those involved in the drug trade are ruthless. The one old white guy is inevitably racist, ranting about woke, PC culture.” West’s wife is reduced to the nagging husband role, constantly complaining about their son (and for very good reason)—which is a shame because Sam Quortin makes the most of the role. West’s son Jake is one of the most obnoxious, mind-numbingly rebellious teenagers you’ve ever seen.

Even the bigger names attached to the film don’t get to do much with their roles. Ben Foster is intriguing as Sunny, a vicious member of the drug trade, but his character is given little to do. Melissa Leo does some delightful set-pieces as Smiley’s mother, but her character is woefully underwritten. It’s really hard to care about characters in a movie when the script doesn’t.

King Ivory is mired in expository dialogue. So much of the conversation is about warring drug cartels, but you never get a sense of who’s behind the cartels. It’s like listening to your partner explain the intricacies of their duties: interesting in theory, but these scenes feel disconnected from the emotional core of the film.

Speaking of, King Ivory is at its most devastating when it examines how fentanyl affects people. It captures the addictive feelings that drugs create, and how they affect people’s lives – once you take it, it creates such a powerful high that there is a desperation to feel that remarkable rush again. This is a bleak, unforgiving film that is candid about the impact drug cartels have on communities, and how fentanyl in particular can tear families apart. Sadly, King Ivory invests most of its effort into a police procedural that we’ve seen too many times before, and with far more enthusiasm than what’s on display here. This is a film that spends a lot of time meandering through all-too-familiar beats, leaving the best material overshadowed by gunfire.

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