This British crime drama about drug deals in London was on Channel 4 for two seasons back in the early teens and then revived for Netflix in the last half decade. That’s relevant because of something that happened to me while I tried to watch it. But I’ll get to that in a second. It’s …
Tag: Drugs
Clockers (1992) by Richard Price
This is a crime thriller/murder mystery novel that actually turns out to be a tragedy instead. It is artfully done and feels really authentic, at least to someone like me (who knows nothing of this kind of thing). Massive SPOILERS
The Corner (2000)
20 years after first encountering The Wire I finally watched the second of its spiritual prequels. The first was Homicide. (RIP Andre Braugher.) You might call Homicide and The Corner The Wire’s parents, one is about cops in Baltimore, based on a David Simon book, and the other is about drug addicts in Baltimore, based on a different David Simon book. It’s …
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021) by Patrick Radden Keefe
This is a well-written but maddening and saddening biography of the Sackler family, who are best known as the owners of Purdue Pharma and Purdue Frederick, i.e. the OxyContin people. It’s not really the story of OxyContin or the opioid epidemic, but rather just the history of the family. It’s a revealing story about how …
Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)
This is an extraordinarily tense and well-directed thriller about the escalation and increased militarization of the Ward on Drugs. For the most part, I really, really liked Sicario, but I struggled with something and I’m not sure whether or not it could have ended better. SPOILERS