Steven Soderbergh’s Best Picture winner Traffic has loomed large over drug war dramas for 25 years. But if you’re going to emulate something, might as well crib from the best, and that’s what John Swab does with King Ivory, a multi-faceted thriller that tackles the fentanyl crisis from the perspective of drug enforcement agents, cartel kingpins, drug addicts, and heartbroken families in Tulsa, OK.. But for Swab, this is a deeply personal story. While the Tulsa native has made his share of crime movies and explored Big Pharma’s illegality in the film Body Brokers, Swab’s own struggles with opioids offer unyielding frankness and hopefulness when most films in this genre are lacking in both.
King Ivory also benefits from the strongest cast Swab has ever assembled. Three of the best character actors in the business anchor the intertwining subplots. James Badge Dale narcotics agent Layne West, who we first meet as he’s in a blistering shootout at a drug den, resulting in his best friend and partner Ty (played by George Carroll aka the rapper Slaine) takes a bullet to the vest. But the war on drugs is also dangerously close to home for Layne, whose son Jack (Jasper Jones) is a high schooler easily tempted into fentanyl by his addict girlfriend (Kaylee Curry). The scenes of them getting high, and that feeling of taking that first hit, feel like they’re coming from someone who has been there and knows the allure intimately.
Meanwhile, Ben Foster is George “Smiley” Greene, an inmate who talks softly through a trach ring, and is roped into doing the dirty work for the Native American cartel led by tribal chief Holt Lightfeather, played by the late Graham Greene in his final performance. Once released, Smiley hooks up with his protective mother, Ginger (frequent Swab collaborator and Oscar winner Melissa Leo) and unhinged uncle Mickey (Ritchie Coster) to eliminate the competition and stay out of danger.
This theme of protecting the younger generation continues with Ramon Gázra, a Mexican narco played by Better Call Saul‘s Michael Mando. Ramon has a family to feed and he does it by transporting cheap fentanyl into the country through desperate drug mules. One of those is Lago (David De La Barcena), a teen who survives a near-fatal disaster to become one of Ramon’s dealers, dropping off drugs around town like he was the pizza guy.
With seven movies in seven years, I can say that Swab has improved each step of the way. King Ivory is the most sprawling film he’s done yet, and it shows a full range of his skills as a writer and director. The film can be sensitive, even gentle at times, by depicting the grip that opioids can have on an addict, and the destruction it can cause to a family. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust just the same”, Lightfeather says in a critical conversation with Layne, and the film does a fantastic job of presenting the law and the unlawful as people just trying to do right by their families.
Swab also excels in the violent sequences, which are quick, dirty, and brutal, shot with handheld agility by DP Will Stone. King Ivory isn’t what you’d call an action movie, but the body count stacks pretty high, and the tense feeling that bullets could fly at any moment is thick from start to finish. The best pure action scene occurs at the film’s shootout finale in a rundown motel, with cops and gangsters popping up around corners on multiple levels, turning the place into a warzone.
While the dialogue and some of the story beats slip into cliché, an odd clash with the authenticity Swab so often brings, King Ivory is a gripping, expansive drug war epic. It pulls no punches in the chances of ending the opioid epidemic, but leaves room for optimism that those who come next will survive to take up the fight.
King Ivory opens November 14th via Roadside Attractions.
