King Ivory

It’s bleak and uncompromising, but it’s a hell of an experience.

This is a powerful, well-made, urgently topical thriller that should put writer-director John Swab firmly on the map.

It’s definitely an over-the-top finale, and not everything ultimately seems real in King Ivory. But what makes Swab’s latest rise above your average drug thriller is how he tries to make each moment feel like it’s been drawn from a certain reality.

While this slick film wants to use their stories to put faces to the fentanyl epidemic, Swab’s genre instincts get the better of him.

Aiming to be a blistering examination of America’s unwinnable War on Drugs, the high-octane King Ivory is intense without being insightful.

Unfortunately the film is both overlong and underdeveloped.