ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

war on drugs

Crisis – Trying to Take on Opioids

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The opioid epidemic is the setting for Nicholas Jarecki’s Crisis. The film looks at the issue from different angles by using three storylines (two of which converge) that allow the film to explore the pain caused by this problem as well as ethical and law enforcement issues that complicate the issue in many ways. The film rapidly flips from one story to another.

Jake Kelly (Armie Hammer) is an undercover DEA agent who is working to bring together a sting that will break up an international fentanyl smuggling operation. Kelly has a sister who is struggling with addiction. His operation has him serving as a middle man between Detroit drug dealers and a supplier in Montreal. As he tries to negotiate the dangerous landscape of such an operation, he is also brought back to the consequences of addiction as he tries to deal with his sister.

The emotional side of the story focuses on Claire Reimann (Evangeline Lilly), a woman with a past of opioid problems whose son goes missing. When he is found dead, he seems to have overdosed. But it becomes evident that this was not an accident, but a murder to deal with loose ends of a smuggling operation that her son unwittingly was part of. As she seeks to find out more, it will lead her to Montreal as well.

The more complex storyline focuses on ethical and business aspects of the opioid issue. Dr. Tyrone Brower (Gary Oldman) is an academic who does research for at a university. In doing tests on a prospective non-addictive painkiller about to be approved, he discovers some disturbing information. But he faces several dilemmas, including being offered a huge amount of money to underwrite his lab (if he’s willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement), and threats to his reputation and job. Should he blow the whistle and risk everything he has? What is his responsibility to the university? What is his responsibility to society as a whole?

This storyline also takes us into the Big Pharma business world where companies are looking for profits, but at what cost to society? Is their product a blessing or a curse? Will the profits from the new drug make it possible to develop even better ones?

The storylines focusing on Jake Kelly and Claire Reimann create a crime/thriller kind of film. The tension builds throughout the film to lead to a showdown that will end up with gunfire and death. But this is a storyline that grows out of anger and pain. It looks for revenge and making someone pay. There really isn’t anything new in this part of the film.

I found the Dr. Brower narrative much more interesting. It asks questions that are important to consider, both on about academia and the business world and their responsibilities to society. The question is brought up in various ways concerning doing what is practical, what is profitable, and what is right. I thought this plotline could have easily been expanded to be a complete film in itself by delving a bit deeper into the business and governmental aspects that are only briefly touched on.

Crisis is available in theaters (where open) and coming soon to VOD.

Photos by Philippe Bosse, courtesy of Quiver Distribution.

Most Wanted – The Cost of Ambition

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What happens when a big, police inspired drug sting goes bad? Most Wanted, from writer/director Daniel Roby, is inspired by a true story of a Canadian man who was used by the police and left hanging in the wind when things turned bad.

Daniel Léger (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) is a recovering heroin addict, who finds himself connected to Glen Picker (Jim Gaffigan), a small-time dealer and informant to the Federal police. He convinces Federal agent Frank Cooper (Stephen McHattie) that Léger can make a big drug deal in Thailand. Cooper, who has been passed over for a promotion, wants to make a name for himself and sets up an extensive and expensive operation in conjunction with the Thai police. It turns out Léger is not the person they all think, and really isn’t up to this task. When things fall apart and a Canadian agent dies in the process, Léger ends up serving a 100 year sentence in a rugged Thai prison.

He would have languished there if not for Victor Malarek (Josh Harnett) an investigative reporter for the Globe and Mail. Mararek is on the outs with the newspaper’s management. He is brash, confident and way too full of himself. But when he goes to Thailand to get an interview with this Canadian citizen that seems to have been abandoned by the Canadian government, he learns that Léger was a patsy who was used by police who want to make this all disappear.

A familiar three-act format might have been a bit more appropriate for the storytelling. Instead we get the story in two parallel timelines, one focusing on Léger and the police operation, the other on Malarek’s investigation. Knowing this going in may make the first quarter of the movie a bit more understandable as it alternates between timelines.

The story is one of ambitions. Léger is an innocent person caught up in a battle of people looking to advance themselves. Picker is in this for the money he’s promised when the operation is completed. Cooper wants to prove that he should have a better position in the RCMP. Malarek enters this fray looking for a big story, but discovers that the person who this story revolves around is more important than the story he wants. Malarek becomes the agent of justice in the story.

It also speaks to the way a person can be seen as expendable to someone’s ambitions. Léger’s life was considered by the police involved to be so unimportant that it didn’t matter that he would spend his life in jail for what they orchestrated. And to protect the institutional integrity of the police, the government was willing to let this one, unimportant, former drug addict suffer what was not really his doing.

The film is set during the time of the US War on Drugs, and Canada’s own version of that. One of the keys that makes that “war” so ineffective was the idea that those involved with drugs were in some way unworthy of the protection of the law or of basic human consideration. It resulted in long, unjust prison sentences with no real consideration of the harm done to people in need. Daniel Léger is only one example.

Most Wanted is available through Virtual Cinema at local art houses and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Saban Films.

The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández – A Story to Remember

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Corridos are Mexican folk ballads. Sometimes those ballads are used to relate history that is deemed important. The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández is essentially a film corrido that recalls the 1997 shooting of an 18 year old high school student on the US-Mexico border by US Marines. The Emmy-nominated film, directed by Kieran Fitzgerald and narrated by Tommy Lee Jones, originally aired on PBS in 2008, but is now arriving on VOD.

Esequiel Hernández lived with his family about 200 yards from the Rio Grande. He and his siblings were born here. One evening while herding his family’s goats, he came under suspicion of a group of Marines who were assigned to observe the border as part of the War on Drugs. It should be noted that their mission was to observe and report to law enforcement, not to interdict drug trafficking. But as Esequiel cared for his goats he carried a .22 rifle to deal with coyotes. The fully camouflaged Marines believed he fired at them. They did not immediately return fire, but tracked him over wide area before one of them shot him. Esequiel Hernández became the first American citizen killed by US military on American soil since Kent State in 1970.

The ensuing investigation never led to any charges against the Marines. The film allows us to hear from Border Patrol officials, local law enforcement officials, government officials, and three of the four Marines involved in the incident (only the one who fired the shot failed to take part). The perspective of the film is that justice was not served in this case. It points out that the Marines were probably acting outside their rules of engagements. It also shows that the government and the military quickly closed wagons to prevent what could have become a very bad public image problem. This incident brought an end to the military involvement at the border until recently as the military works on building a border wall.

It’s important to note that the film looks back ten years after the fact, and we are now seeing it another decade later. But even though the events recounted are so far in the past, the themes that are involved continue to be timely. That is where the corrido nature of this story comes into play. We are asked to remember this event—this piece of history—for what it tells us of the ongoing issues we face today.

The most obvious issue is immigration, even though Esequiel Hernández was not an immigrant and the Marines were not tasked with dealing with immigration. They were only there to try to identify drug trafficking. But people of Hispanic heritage anywhere near the border continue to face assumptions about their place in society.

Questions are also raised about the failure of the legal system to bring justice in situations of armed force being used improperly. Neither the civilian legal system or the military system was able or willing to confront the problems involved in this incident. Some in the military even sought to give the shooter a special commendation.

But what struck me as a much more appropriate question for us to consider is the way the Marines tracked Esequiel for a long period. It brings to mind the illogical extensions of stand-your-ground laws that have led to various killings of people of color in recent years. For me, the part of the story that is most disturbing is that this could have been avoided if the Marines had simply stayed where they were.

Some corridos and their stories speak to us through the years. The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández is such a story.

The film is available on iTunes and Amazon.