Crisis

In early 2021, while most of us were still sanitizing our groceries and wondering if we’d ever see the inside of a cinema again, Nicholas Jarecki released a film that tried to remind us of a much older, much deadlier plague. Crisis arrived at a moment when "health" was the only thing on the news, yet it focused on the rot within the very industry meant to provide it. It’s a film that feels like a spiritual successor to Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000), trading the sun-bleached Mexican borders for the cold, gray landscapes of Detroit and Montreal.

I actually watched this for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon while wearing one mismatched sock and trying to ignore a fly that had been trapped in my living room for three days. Honestly, the fly’s desperate, buzzing struggle for freedom mirrored the film's frantic pacing more than I expected. It’s a "Dad Movie" thriller in the best way—sturdy, serious, and deeply cynical about how the world actually works.

The Triple-Threat Narrative

The film juggles three storylines that eventually (and predictably) collide. First, we have Gary Oldman (Slow Horses, Darkest Hour) as Dr. Tyrone Brower, a university professor who discovers that the "non-addictive" painkiller his lab is testing for a massive drug company is, in fact, very addictive. Oldman is in full "righteous indignation" mode here, and nobody does "frustrated man in a cardigan" better than him.

Then there’s Armie Hammer (The Social Network, Call Me By Your Name) playing Jake Kelly, an undercover DEA agent trying to orchestrate a massive Fentanyl sting involving Canadian cartels. This side of the movie provides the genre thrills—secret meetings in dark warehouses, burner phones, and the constant threat of getting a bullet in the head. It’s solid, even if we’ve seen this specific brand of undercover tension a dozen times before.

The third, and perhaps most grounded, thread follows Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man, Lost) as Claire Reimann, an architect and recovering addict who is trying to find out how her teenage son ended up dead from an overdose. Lilly gives the film its raw, emotional pulse. While the other two leads are dealing with macro-problems like corporate greed and international smuggling, her stakes are painfully micro. She’s just a mother who refuses to accept the "accidental death" label as an excuse for systemic failure.

A Career in the Balance

It’s impossible to talk about Crisis without acknowledging the elephant in the room: the timing. This was a film designed for a major theatrical push, but it hit just as the pandemic’s second winter was biting hard. More significantly, it was released right as Armie Hammer’s personal life and career were being dismantled by a series of very public, very bizarre headlines. The marketing essentially vanished overnight.

Watching it now, there’s a strange meta-layer to Hammer’s performance. He’s playing a man living a lie, hiding his identity, and teetering on the edge of a breakdown. It adds a layer of unintended discomfort to the proceedings. Meanwhile, Luke Evans (The Hobbit, Dracula Untold) shows up as a pharmaceutical executive with the kind of smugness usually reserved for people who explain Bitcoin to you at a wedding. He’s the perfect foil for Oldman, representing the polished, corporate face of a crisis that kills tens of thousands of people a year.

The 35mm Grit of a Dying Industry

One thing I genuinely appreciated was Jarecki’s decision to shoot on 35mm film. In an era where every mid-budget thriller looks like it was filmed on a high-end iPhone and color-graded to look like a bowl of oatmeal, the cinematography here by Nicolas Bolduc has a real, tangible texture. The skin tones look human, and the Detroit winters feel appropriately biting.

The script, also by Jarecki (who previously directed the excellent Richard Gere vehicle Arbitrage), is sharp, though it occasionally trips over its own earnestness. It really wants to be a "Capital-M Message Movie." Sometimes it succeeds, particularly in showing how the legal drug trade and the illegal one are essentially two sides of the same coin. At other times, it feels a bit like a PSA with a $20 million budget.

Is it as good as Traffic? No. It lacks that film's effortless cool and structural complexity. But it’s essentially "Traffic" for people who find Steven Soderbergh a bit too fancy. It’s a meat-and-potatoes thriller that respects your intelligence even if it doesn't reinvent the wheel.

Crisis is a film that deserved a better fate than being a footnote in a celebrity scandal and a victim of pandemic-era release schedules. It’s a reminder that before we were all worried about a virus, we were already in the middle of a man-made epidemic that shows no signs of slowing down. If you’re looking for a solid evening of "serious" cinema that doesn't require a degree in franchise lore, this is a hidden gem well worth digging up on your favorite streaming service. Just make sure your socks match before you start.