Double Campaign – Weekend
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Netflix releases “Side Effect: Death” – the twin series “Withdrawal” about the opioid crisis in America.
America seems to have finally dealt with the opioid crisis, which was provoked by the pharmaceutical magnates of the Sacklers, who launched the drug OxyContin on the market in the 1990s under the guise of a painkiller. But in Hollywood there is a script crisis: streaming services shoot series on the same plots. So, everyone suddenly seized on fraudulent startups, and a clip of series came out about them: Netflix dramatized the fraudster Anna Delvey, Hulu dramatized Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, Apple TV + exposed WeWork, and Showtime kicked Uber and Travis Kalanick personally. The genre of “startuppersploitation” was formed. The story of a housewife who killed her neighbor with an ax hooked two studios at once: Hulu’s Candy and HBO Max’s Love and Death. And Starz’s Gaslit and HBO Max’s The White House Plumbers copied the Watergate hotel break-in. The “side effect” is also secondary, it looks like deja vu for those who watched “Breaking”according to Borges, “there are only four stories,” and there are many streaming platforms.
But “Side Effect” is done skillfully and even dashingly, with propagandistic enthusiasm, denouncing the bleeding public ulcers. His main target is the justice system, thanks to which not a single Sackler was harmed, despite the huge number of deaths from an overdose of OxyContin. Oxy’s chief apologist Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick) looks like a psychopath in the series, completely devoid of empathy. For him, only imaginary conversations with the late Arthur Sackler (Clark Gregg), the founder of the family pharmaceutical business, are important. “In the name of the family” (although what is a family for a psychopath?), Richard does not succumb to “difficulties” – the stupid attacks of legalists, and simply dismisses the news of overdoses and robberies of pharmacies.
Dr. Arthur Sackler is also a demonic figure: in the frame he personally performs a lobotomy on the patient (it looks like medieval torture!), And all his philanthropy and patronage of art and museums are only derivatives of the exorbitant pride of a man who wants to “leave a legacy behind him.” Well, he left him in the field of aggressive direct marketing: a rare doctor, confused by pseudo-scientific chatter and promises of a good income, could resist the assertiveness of the oxy host.
One of these OxyContin Valkyries, young Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny), quickly realizes that she is no better than a drug dealer, but wants an expensive car, a spacious apartment and beautiful clothes – evil is banal. Similar motives are with Dr. Curtis Wright (Noah Harpster), who oversaw the examination of OxyContin in the FDA – the body that gives permission for the introduction of new drugs into everyday life and approves the formulations in the instructions for use. For almost a year, he didn’t give the Sacklers the coveted oxy license, but they still managed to please his vanity and get what they were looking for, and Wright went to work at Purdue Pharma.
On our side of the barrier are big pharma fighters and its victims. This is an exemplary family man Glen Kreiger – he was played by Taylor Kitsch, who left his hockey career due to an injury in his youth and probably knows a lot about pain. Glen injures his spine in an auto repair shop, takes oxy for constant pain and soon becomes a complete drug addict: no one is immune from this, not even a good guy! – tells us the series. All this lawlessness is opposed by the prosecutor’s office investigator Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba). In the first episode, this irreconcilable aunt, during a business meeting with lawyers, refuses to sit on the chair where the villain Richard Sackler sat, and asks to bring another one. She stubbornly digs under the Sacklers, with the help of the prosecutor from Virginia, she manages to bring the case to court and pin the pharmaceutical magnates to the wall. But one call to the White House by their lawyer, the notorious Rudolph Giuliani, turns the process into a sham.
All this is terribly dramatic, the only question is whether it will be interesting for the viewer who has seen “Breaking” to watch the same story again? More likely than not, because Peter Berg’s Side Effect is a superb piece of Hollywood production, and Hollywood is the best propaganda machine in the world. She exposes the old crimes of big pharma with simple and effective tricks. This is a parallel montage where opioid sellers are swaggering and at the same time their victim is writhing in agony, and a series of pretentious scenes with polished lines in which fighters for justice run into the iceberg of the judicial machine. This series definitely has a drive and is well packaged for everyone to watch and learn.
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