James Badge Dale and Melissa Leo co-star in John Swab's Oklahoma-based story, which follows several characters caught in a brutal war on drugs.
The shadow of Steven Soderbergh's 2000 drug war epic, Traffic, looms large over all the drug dealers, cartel members, local gang members, and fentanyl addicts who populate John Swab's gritty thriller, King Ivory. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Director: John Swab
Writer: John Swab
Stars: James Badge Dale, Ben Foster, Michael Mando
Drawing inspiration from a modern classic that depicted the fight against crack cocaine to stem its devastation in the United States, Swab repeats the same structure more than two decades later to address the opioid epidemic, and generally achieves powerful results. Less dramatic and poetic than Soderbergh's film, King Ivory nevertheless features some chillingly realistic action sequences, steely characters, and a level of brutality that demands attention. His relentlessly bleak vision of the devastating impact of fentanyl in the United States isn't necessarily for everyone, but it's well worth watching.
Swab honed his skills directing genre films like Ida Red and Candy Land, releasing an impressive seven feature films since 2019. (He has another film, the $20 million action flick Long Gone Heroes, coming out later this month.) His gritty aesthetic and penchant for the socially marginalized—Candy Land was about a group of truck-stop sex workers known as "lot lizards"—give his work an exploitation-film feel, which he applies here to a more serious and well-researched story about the impact of fentanyl in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
King Ivory, whose title comes from one of the drug's many street names, starts strong and doesn't let up until the final shot. Will Stone's handheld cinematography and Andrew Aarronson's frenetic editing keep the action constantly moving, which can be somewhat disorienting at first. However, the viewer eventually grasps the numerous conflicts that unfold, all related to a highly addictive opiate that is easy to manufacture, transport, and distribute.
Swab knows the drug well. In a rare confession for a film's press release, the director admits to injecting fentanyl in 2015, when he was addicted himself. And although he has been clean for nine years, the experience undoubtedly contributed to the realism of all the scenes of dependence and use.
These sequences of basic drug use, of which there are several, revolve around Jack (Jasper Jones), an attractive high school student who becomes addicted to fentanyl thanks to his girlfriend, Colby (Kaylee Curry). It turns out that Jack's father, Layne (James Badge Dale), is a narcotics officer who fights daily to get the drug off the streets. Along with his partner, Ty (George Carroll), Layne employs brutal tactics, more befitting a U.S. Marine than a police officer, as evidenced in the opening shootout where bullets fly with force.
But in Tulsa, a war is being waged, and the lucrative drug trade isn't controlled by the usual cartel, but by a tribal chief (Graham Greene) who runs the Indian Brotherhood from a state penitentiary. Behind bars, he recruits his cellmate, Smiley (Ben Foster), to carry out quick assassinations before his release. Once free, Smiley reunites with his uncle, Mickey, played by British actor Ritchie Coster in a completely outlandish take on an Irish bumpkin, to help the tribe eliminate their local rivals.
The characters and key plot points are sketched out so quickly that they are sometimes difficult to follow, and it takes quite a while to figure out who is working for whom and how. However, Swab’s raw, dynamic direction and his desire to capture a gritty, bleak version of contemporary Tulsa help compensate for the somewhat scattered narrative.
A third perspective is added when Swab introduces the Mexican segment, where fentanyl is manufactured cheaply and smuggled into the United States by cartels. The two main characters are Ramón Gázra (Michael Mando, who memorably played a drug lord in Better Call Saul) and a young man named Lago (David De La Barcena), who is smuggled across the border to work as a courier, making DoorDash-style deliveries to addicts in need.
The scale and scope of Swab’s work are impressive, but also somewhat disproportionate. Some scenes feel like they were lifted straight from real life, while others come across as overly cinematic, with dialogue that feels like genre clichés. The performances aren't entirely consistent either, although they possess an undeniable, strange naturalness. Foster particularly shines as a bloodthirsty killer.
Even more memorable are the key scenes that follow Layne and his fellow officers as they try to apprehend the criminals. One takes place in a supermarket packed with customers and illuminated by bright fluorescent lights, further emphasizing the brutality of what ultimately unfolds. Another occurs just before the end and involves a shootout in a motel that becomes so violent and out of control that it resembles a scene from an Iraq War film.
It's certainly an over-the-top ending, and not everything in King Ivory feels real. But what distinguishes Swab's latest film from the typical drug-trafficking thriller is how he strives to make every moment feel as if it were lifted from real life. The portrait he paints of the fentanyl plague currently gripping the country is truly chilling, and that was clearly the director's intention. Even the few glimmers of hope that appear in the film, only emerging at the very end, are presented as mere mirages in a desert of drugs and American decay.
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