The U.S. Fentanyl Crisis Gets the Hollywood Thriller Treatment

VENICE, Italy—Fentanyl addictions have taken hold of America. According to the U.S. State Department, some 70,000 people died from fentanyl related problems in 2023. The drug is difficult to trace at the border due to its chemical makeup, and it's considerably more potent than heroin. King Ivory, written and directed by John Swab, takes its title from one of fentanyls street names. The film attempts to tackle the fentanyl crisis that's rocked the nation—a noble cause indeed. Unfortunately the film is both overlong and underdeveloped.

There are three converging plot threads in King Ivory, which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival. One involves West (James Badge Dale), a cop tasked with defending Oklahoma from gun crime, alongside his wife and two kids. Then there's Smiley (Ben Foster), an inmate at a maximum security facility who earns his freedom via shocking acts. Finally, drug cartel leader Ramón Garza (Michael Mando) traffics 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 trafficked from Mexico. The boy has aspirations of being an accountant (his mother hopes he’ll be a doctor) and his parents risk everything to get him there, offering the deed to their farm in order to pay for him to cross the border. But when he gets there, he’s immediately thrown into the drug world, forced to drive from location to location selling fentanyl. Annoyingly, this thread is barely given attention.

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