‘Painkiller’ Review: Netflix’s Vicious Retelling of the Opioid Crisis Is Effective but Familiar
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Just about everything you need to hear from “Painkiller” is conveyed within its familiar yet hard-hitting first hour. There’s an aptly scathing introduction to the Sackler family, starting with Arthur (Clark Gregg), who transformed the pharmaceutical industry through public-facing advertising campaigns, then his nephew/”disciple,” Richard (Matthew Broderick), who followed his uncle’s playbook when pushing OxyContin to the masses. Next there’s Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny), a broke college grad who’s recruited by the Sackler’s company, Purdue, to help push their new wonder drug to doctors. Then there’s Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a loving husband and father who’s prescribed — you guessed it — OxyContin after an on-the-job injury. And finally, providing the framework for all these stories, there’s Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), a lawyer at the U.S. Attorney’s office who was among the first to investigate the tragic impact of OxyContin — and how the Sacklers are responsible for its heinous spread.
But really, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 20 years, all you need to glean from “Painkiller” is delivered within the first few seconds, when an uncredited woman reads the obligatory legal preface: “This program is based on real events. However, certain [parts] have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes.” Then, after a deep breath, she adds, “What wasn’t fictionalized is that my son, at the age of 15, was prescribed Oxycontin. He lived in years and years of addiction, and at the age of 32, he died all alone in the freezing cold in a gas station parking lot.” Wiping tears away, cradling a framed photograph of Christopher, she adds, “And we miss him.”
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“Painkiller” is filled with heart-wrenching moments like these, though few stir up the same potent mix of anger and agony as the parents who open every episode. With all six hours directed by Peter Berg (whose use of real-life subjects in scripted entertainment is a personal trademark), the Netflix limited series is efficient and charged in a way that 2021’s Hulu limited series “Dopesick” sorely lacked. “Painkiller” is also tinged with a raw, searing rage that the previous program on the opioid crisis largely tamped down in favor of serious, somber storytelling. Otherwise, the two shows are quite similar. They cover similar subjects, and even the fictionalized elements (namely, their stories from the addict’s point-of-view) follow parallel beats. If you saw the Michael Keaton-led series or are otherwise informed about America’s national health emergency, “Painkiller” isn’t requisite viewing (and it’s certainly a painful journey). But if you’re so inclined to dance with the devil, or have yet to make its acquaintance, this vicious retelling of Richard Sackler’s crimes against humanity will get you right up to speed.
Based on the book “Pain Killer” by Barry Meier as well as The New Yorker article “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain,” the series works best when it manages to feel lived in rather than proudly ranting. Take Kitsch’s character. Glen owns an auto repair shop that he runs with his wife, Lily (Carolina Bartczak). As he walks through the two-car garage, he sternly chides his slacking crew to get back to work, citing the day’s duties that take priority. He shakes a customer’s hand without wiping off the engine grease covering his own, which prompts a quick grimace from the put-off patron. In the waiting room, there’s a small wooden table filled with toys, so their 2-year-old daughter can keep herself busy while mom and dad run the business.
The scene is there to establish Glen’s daily life — that he’s a regular blue-collar guy with regular blue-collar problems — but the specific way he talks to his team, the oil so often on his hands he forgets to clean them, and his kid’s tiny, time-worn wooden table are all warm details that flesh out his universe. Later, when Glen’s going through his first bout of withdrawal, he looks under the stove for a dropped pill. As he holds his flashlight between the floor and the bottom of the oven, little bits of dust and grime are all it takes to illustrate how rare it is that he moves this heavy appliance, which makes it all the more startling when he flips it over in search of said pill.
Much of Glen’s story feels as real as scripted TV can get, and Kitsch’s restrained performance carries it with his easygoing charisma. But it also emphasizes when “Painkiller” goes off the rails, twisting into an Adam McKay-esque call to arms that lacks the patience and trust in its audience to understand what’s wrong. Uzo Aduba’s attorney, Edie, gets the worst of it, mainly because so much of her role is delivering impassioned speeches that double as narration. Despite the majority of the show being set in the past (from the early ’90s through 2018), Edie is introduced in the show’s present when she’s asked to help a multi-state lawsuit against Purdue. She starts from the beginning, laying out the history of the company, as well as her role in investigating its criminality.
Although lawyers are thorough by nature, far too much of her deposition covers well-trodden ground — topics that these folks wouldn’t need to be lectured about, especially by Edie. She becomes less like a real person and more like the composite character (and audience proxy) she is, shouting grievance after grievance about truly contemptible company men. Not unlike the talky, reaching melodrama in her one season of “In Treatment,” Aduba’s scenes too often strand her with only her voice. She’s not given the depth of life surrounding other characters, and the role proves as exhausting to watch as it must have been to embody.
Broderick fares better, in part because he’s asked to do much less. As Richard Sackler, a man so vehemently despised Edie refuses to sit in the same room as a chair he once sat in, Broderick creates a curious blank slate. He spends much of his time in silence, thinking, as writers and showrunners Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster provide strange little activities to keep him busy. He throws popped popcorn kernels into a glass of water, or he watches his own garden party, pant-less, from an overlooking balcony. He’s always with his dog, Unch, and one of the show’s better moments comes when he plays fetch with the massive pupper in Purdue’s expansive foyer — right in front of Edie, who’s been banned from the adjoining room where her colleagues are interrogating Richard’s underlings.
When asked why she thinks Richard did what he did with OxyContin, Edie says, “I don’t give a shit about the motivation” — a point which “Painkiller” does and doesn’t agree with. Throughout the limited series, Richard talks to the ghost of his dead uncle, Arthur. The two bicker over the best way to handle business strategies and legal troubles, but the show never goes so far as to pin Richard’s immorality on a bad father figure. Instead, they paint the younger Sackler as a simpler, less complicated figure. Arthur gave out lobotomies with a wry smile and hocked “cocaine tooth drops” for early paydays. He coveted wealth — not just money, but the power and permanence only generational affluence can ensure. His charitable donations ensured the Sackler name would be associated with libraries, hospitals, and museums. He sold Valium, and he built a legacy.
Richard doesn’t care about legacy. At one point, he even admits as much — claiming all that matters to him is “winning and money” — but such single-minded sentiments are already ingrained within Broderick’s blank stare, his robotic demeanor, and Richard’s solitary existence. Many of his scenes, including the first, take place on his colossal estate, but there’s never anyone else there. Sure, he’ll host a party or his butler will help him with some chores, but he’s purposefully isolated in a way that echoes his heartless nature. Like so many rich assholes before and since, maybe he’s able to inflict such incredible pain without a second thought because he’s almost completely untethered from our shared reality. Or maybe he’s untethered from our shared reality because he callously inflicts such incredible pain? “Painkiller” doesn’t choose. Instead, the series — and Broderick’s performance — make you sit with the queasy reality that these men exist, they’re not special, and the best we can do is recognize as much before they use their money and power to sugarcoat history.
“Painkiller” is more blunt than not and more predictable than surprising. Each of the aforementioned storylines will end up exactly where you expect, and there are moments where its passionate attack on heartless monsters clips unintended targets. (In its rush to eviscerate the Sacklers, the show gives off recurring “don’t trust the government” and “don’t listen to doctors” vibes.) It’s far from a great series, but “Dopesick” wasn’t either, and both eventually settle for telling an important story in an accessible fashion. That “Painkiller” covers the same ground in two fewer hours at least makes it the less taxing option, if you need it.
Grade: C+
“Painkiller” premieres Thursday, August 10 on Netflix. All six episodes will be available at once.
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