Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crisis’ on Showtime, a So-so Dramatic Thriller Telling Three Stories About the Opioid Epidemic

Now on Showtime, Crisis finds writer-director Nicholas Jarecki (Arbitrage) putting a spotlight on the opioid epidemic by intertwining three stories fronted by Armie Hammer — whose sexual-abuse scandal overshadowed the movie’s recent theatrical release — Gary Oldman and Evangeline Lilly. The film boasts that it’s “inspired by true events,” which is wholly believable, considering that each principal star plays someone frustrated by society’s persistent enabling of a deadly drug culture. The primary question here is, though, would each of these three stories be better told in three different movies?

CRISIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jake Kelly’s (Hammer) story, in three scenes: One, he meets with opioid dealers and discusses how they attain painkillers via skeezy “pain clinic” operations in Detroit. Two, he drives to a rehab facility to visit his sister Emmie (Lily-Rose Depp), an opioid addict; she sits on a couch, her eyes empty due to sedatives. And his third stop brings the first two together — he’s a DEA agent working undercover to take down the aforementioned operation, which transports fentanyl across the Canadian border. So his work is personal. He’s watched his sister suffer, and is trying to do something about it.

Elsewhere, a Big Pharma muckity-muck, Bill Simons (Luke Evans), talks to the board about a new near-miracle painkiller that he claims is significantly less addictive than oxycodone, and he has bar graphs to prove it. Those graphs are the product of lab tests led by university scientists like Dr. Tyrone Brower (Oldman) — but testing of the new drug hits a snag when he and his assistants end up with cages full of dead mice. A little more rigorous testing reveals that it could be even worse than oxy. This is when things really come to a head for Brower: Simons puts a check for a $780k grant in front of him, and urges him to sign the usual nondisclosure agreement, except it’s not really the usual NDA at all. The university dean (Greg Kinnear) questions his results and says the school really needs the money. And guess what? Brower has a small sexual harassment scandal in his past, and a pregnant wife, and a tenure hearing on the docket. Does he do the right thing or keep his career on the easy track? He opens up the Food and Drug Administration website, finds the page for whistleblower submissions and takes a deep breath.

And then there’s Claire Reimann (Lilly). We meet her at an AA meeting, where she talks about her oxy addiction; she’s in recovery. She works at an architecture firm, and is delighted when her 16-year-old son David (Billy Bryk) drops by to say hello. She asks him to pick up a couple things from the grocery store for dinner, says she loves him — and never sees him alive again. He was found dead in an alley. The cops call it an open-and-closed oxy overdose, but that doesn’t make any sense to Claire. He was a good kid. She cracks the password on his cell phone, hires a private investigator, tracks down some of David’s friends from hockey camp and, well, she gets a gun. And it’s not the type of gun you get from a sporting goods store. It’s the type that can’t be tracked.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Multiple intersecting storylines about the ripple effects of a drug crisis is very much a Traffic move.

Performance Worth Watching: Nobody really has enough substantive character fodder to masticate here. So let’s just say when Gary Oldman raises his voice, one tends to focus one’s attention on it.

Memorable Dialogue: Hearing Hammer clench his teeth and say, “F— YOU. I THOUGHT YOU HAD BIG BALLS” probably isn’t supposed to be funny, but it kind of is.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Yep. Probably should’ve been three movies. The stories can be ranked by their plausibility: Lilly’s borders on ridiculous. Hammer’s is overly contrived, and the way it dovetails with Lilly’s is unconvincing. Oldman’s is the most credible but the least emotionally resonant. Further develop Lilly’s story, and you’d get a pulpy B-movie revenger like Death Wish. Hammer’s could be a gripping subterfuge thriller in the vein of Deep Cover. And Oldman’s has the potential to be a Michael Clayton-esque twisty political drama.

The Oldman narrative is afloat on its own raft, and maybe that’s why it works the best, Jarecki targeting the big three Cs, corporations, capitalism and corruption. It concludes on an ironically hopeful note in spite of the massive entities involved. The other two stories are weak-tea tragedies rooted in the frustration of the little guy, something that could be curtailed if the Oldmans of the world stick to their moral guns. Maybe it’s an obvious statement, but it’s also one worth reiterating.

Jarecki’s goal is to present a mosaic of sorts, where you back up a step and see a broader picture of a significant societal problem. One decision way up in a boardroom has a significant effect on someone much further down the line, that sort of thing. But the characters never feel fully developed; they’re collections of contrivances assembled to reach a predetermined goal. That goal is certainly noble: to present the opioid problem in a humane light. It just doesn’t come together in a coherent or engaging manner.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Good intentions abound, and a talented cast does what it can with the material. But Crisis‘ flaws ultimately outweigh its attributes.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Crisis