The drug dealers in suits and coats: The Crime of the Century

DRUGS: From Big Pharma to Big Government, Alex Gibney explores the causes of the American opioid epidemic. Alex Gibney is fast becoming America’s foremost cinematic chronicler of high-level malfeasance so batshit insane as to be hysterical were it not downright lethal. And with his latest, the two-part, nearly four hour, The Crime of the Century for HBO (presented in association with The Washington Post) he turns his lens on an easy, though long slippery, target: Big Pharma. It’s an interesting decision, to say the least. At a time when corporate brands like Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson (the «kingpin in the opioid crisis», according to the doc, having industrialised the poppy cultivation process in Tasmania, right down to genetically altering the plant for increased potency) are rightly being hailed as lifesaving Covid-19 vaccine heroes on these shores, Gibney delivers a sprawling and devastating counter-narrative. One that intricately traces how an entire drug industry has, for decades, evaded accountability for the opioid-related deaths of half a million. Indeed, it’s enough to make one wonder if the shots-in-arms success, like «vaccine diplomacy», will ultimately prove to have disturbing, reputation-laundering side effects as well in the years to come.

To read my entire critique visit Modern Times Review.