 introduces a slapstick note absent from the real opioid crisis. Worse yet, he tries to have it both ways. Each of the six episodes opens with the family member of a loved one lost to OxyContin – essentially with an effect like heroin in pill-popping form – holding a picture of the victim. They tell us that, while much of what we are about to see has been fictionalised, the underlying scandal is all too true. But it's hard to reconcile that tone with the flippancy with which Painkiller chronicles the rise and fall of the Sacklers and their company Purdue. Matthew Broderick spoofs patriarch Richard as a cartoonish weirdo. He's a weaponised Walter Mitty, stalked by the ghost of his uncle, Arthur Sackler Sr (Clark Gregg), a marketing genius whose lasting contribution to humankind was to make Valium a household name. Now long dead, he haunts his nephew. At one point, they even get into a fistfight. Painkiller is framed as a testimony by Edie Flowers, a prosecutor who led the fight against Purdue. Flowers is fictional – unlike the equivalent character in Dopesick, Rick Mountcastle (Peter Sarsgaard). She is played with impressive forthrightness by Orange Is the New Black's Uzo Aduba. The writers furnish her with an emotive backstory as the daughter of a mother lost to the Washington DC crack epidem){kind=link}
With Painkiller, Netflix can’t decide whether to condemn or turn billionaire Pharma boss Richard Sackler into a joke
The story of the Sackler dynasty and the opioid epidemic unleashed upon America by their “wonder-drug” OxyContin has already been told in Disney+ drama Dopesick. That series played it straight by matter-of-factly outlining the case against the family and their driving force Richard Sackler, portrayed by Michael Stuhlbarg as a drab agent of death.
Eighteen months later, Netflix’s take on OxyContin needs to bring a fresh perspective. It does so by re-imagining tragedy as gonzo farce. Painkiller lands between the bug-eyed The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short – but where those tales already had an element of absurdity, with Painkiller, director Peter Berg (Battleship, Hancock) introduces a slapstick note absent from the real opioid crisis.
Worse yet, he tries to have it both ways. Each of the six episodes opens with the family member of a loved one lost to OxyContin – essentially with an effect like heroin in pill-popping form – holding a picture of the victim. They tell us that, while much of what we are about to see has been fictionalised, the underlying scandal is all too true.
But it’s hard to reconcile that tone with the flippancy with which Painkiller chronicles the rise and fall of the Sacklers and their company Purdue. Matthew Broderick spoofs patriarch Richard as a cartoonish weirdo. He’s a weaponised Walter Mitty, stalked by the ghost of his uncle, Arthur Sackler Sr (Clark Gregg), a marketing genius whose lasting contribution to humankind was to make Valium a household name. Now long dead, he haunts his nephew. At one point, they even get into a fistfight.