Dopesick

 

In the 1990s, Purdue Pharma executive Richard Sackler (Michael Stuhlbarg) aggressively pushes OxyContin as a miracle pain management cure, seeking to downplay or bury reports of its addictive properties. Salesman Billy Cutler (Will Poulter) is at first enthusiastic about marketing Purdue to doctors, but he has second thoughts when higher and higher doses are recommended. One of Billy’s clients, rural Virginia doctor Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton) experiences a similar disillusionment, especially after he begins taking OxyContin himself. Meanwhile, deputy U.S. Attorneys Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard) and Randy Ramseyer (John Hoogenakker) begin investigating Purdue Pharma as does DEA official Bridget Meyer (Rosario Dawson).

 

Beth Macy’s comprehensive exploration of America’s opioid crisis would have made for a fine docuseries. Instead, Danny Strong adapted it as a dramatic miniseries. It’s a dumbed-down distillation with an overly narrow focus even if it does touch on relevant themes and offer potent performances.

 

One of the more salient features of Macy’s book is showing how addiction cuts across race, class, and geographic lines. While the miniseries acknowledges the opioid crisis’s national scope, the characters shown affected by it are largely Appalachian whites. Similarly, the book pointed to plenty of bad actors, unscrupulous Purdue Pharma among them. Here, the “get Purdue” focus obscures the involvement of others.

 

This simplification of a complex issue may make for more manageable storytelling, but it also leads to predictability and one-note characterization. Stuhlbarg plays Richard Sackler as a black hole of amoral greed, and both Poulter (wide-eyed go-getter who develops a conscience) and Dawson (dogged agent whose devotion affects her personal life) play composite characters who function less as people and more as types. Keaton’s Finnix (another composite) acquits himself better. Rather that simply playing the doc as a naïve-but-well-intentioned man led astray, he’s shown as angry and desperate before committing himself to helping others as best he can. The best performance, however, belongs to Kaitlyn Dever as Betsy Mallum, one of Finnix’s Oxy-prescribed patients. The queer daughter of conservative churchgoers who works a dangerous mining job while battling chronic pain, she inspires empathy even at her worst.

 

While Dopesick’s narrative choices are frustrating, it still brings gravity and attention to a worthwhile issue, and if it inspires viewers to read Macy’s more informative telling, all the better.