When you hear the phrase “the opioid crisis,” it can sound like it’s referring to a natural disaster with a beginning and an end. But as Alex Gibney’s shattering two-part, four-hour HBO documentary “The Crime of the Century” makes devastatingly clear, the opioid crisis is more than a human tragedy that has claimed half a million lives. It’s part of what America has become. We’re a nation of addicts, fueled by scuzzy alternating currents of pleasure and despair; a nation of corporate malfeasance; of doctors who knowingly trash the credo of “do no harm”; of regulatory agencies that no longer function as they were designed to; of politicians who allow laws to be written for them. “The Crime of the Century” is a saga of addiction that could have been entitled “What We Did for Greed.”
Gibney is our most avid and deep-drilling documentary muckraker, and...
Gibney is our most avid and deep-drilling documentary muckraker, and...
- 5/3/2021
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
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