‘Painkiller’ Review: Peter Berg’s Miniseries With Taylor Kitsch, Matthew Broderick & More Awkwardly Takes On The Opioid Crisis
theplaylist.netAs of last year, over a million people have died of opioid overdoses in the United States. The central culprits, as outlined in Netflix’s latest miniseries, “Painkiller,” are Purdue Pharma and the “non-addictive” prescription drug they marketed to anyone with a pulse and a toothache: OxyContin.
It’s a distinctly American tragedy — painful, self-inflicted, motivated by avarice, and, sadly, nowhere near adequately addressed even decades on.
There have been plenty of attempts to chart the origins of this crisis on the big and small screens, from documentaries (“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” “The Crime of the Century”) to, fittingly, other prestige streaming miniseries (Hulu’s acclaimed “Dopesick.”) Director Peter Berg’s turn at bat is an overly glib affair that leans a bit too hard into its arch, devious tone to give such apocalyptic material the gravity it deserves.
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