Based on the opioid crisis in the United States, Dopesick looks back on the pharmaceutical scandal surrounding a devastating pain medication. What is this series, available on Disney +, worn by Michael Keaton and Kaytlin Dever worth?
WHAT DOES IT TALK ABOUT ?
Adaptation of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy.
In the heart of a small town in the state of Virginia, he was worn by families affected by the opioid crisis in the United States. The relatives of drug addicts are launching a war with the pharmaceutical lobbies. Police officers and doctors also fight daily against the scourge …
Dopesick has been airing on Disney + Star since November 12, one episode per week. Episodes seen: 6/8.
WHO IS IT WITH?
Far from his image in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Danny Strong has come a long way as an actor and screenwriter in Hollywood and today offers an edifying drama about the opioid crisis in the United States. This important project allows him to collaborate with several of his idols, including Barry Levinson who produces the series and directs the first two episodes.
Dopesick brings together an exceptional cast, between Michael Keaton, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Kaitlyn Dever, Will Poulter, Rosario Dawson and John Hoogenakker who makes it a point of honor to embody with authenticity and force the actors and victims of this scourge that plagued North America.
WELL WORTH A LOOK ?
By adapting Beth Macy’s bestseller, Danny Strong tackles an important subject that has deeply marked the United States: the opioid crisis and more particularly the complex investigation into Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical company of which one one of the products, oxycontin, is believed to be primarily responsible for this crisis.
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Purdue Pharma has been advertising this medication for pain relief, which has deliberately omitted the harmful effects and addiction caused by regular use of this product. And it is this drug that will turn the lives of Dopesick’s characters upside down.
How a country got hooked
The series aims to be choral and allows us to focus as much on the instigators as on the victims and investigators involved in this dramatic pharmaceutical scandal. Thus, the camera takes us behind the scenes of Purdue Pharma meeting rooms, in the offices of the DEA but also in the office of a doctor in dire straits in the face of the distress and pain of a mining community in Virginia.
It is difficult to follow so many characters, so complex are the stakes. And the incessant back and forth in time over twenty years does not really help to focus on certain arches, especially those concerning the police and justice, with insipid and poorly written protagonists.
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Where the series hits hard and hooks the viewer is when it pits the sequences at Purdue Pharma, with a family desperate to make a fortune, and those within the mining community plunging into a downward spiral. because of the drugs sold by the pharmaceutical company. We appreciate a fairly classic but effective staging that allows the series not to fall into vulgar sensationalism but rather to focus on the tragic facts.
We will note the sincere and applied performances of Kaitlyn Dever (already exceptional in Unbelievable), as a victim of the drug OxyContin, and Michael Keaton, as a doctor manipulated by the pharmaceutical industry. Dopesick is worth for these performances and these leading actors who embody the most important protagonists of this opiate crisis.
Despite a convoluted narrative construction and secondary characters lacking in depth, Dopesick sheds light on this scourge that still affects the United States through edifying, almost documentary scenes, which show how far indignity can go. in the face of human pain and how capitalism has made millions of people addicted to a lie.
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