“Crisis”: Greed, Opioids, and a Little Dirty Harry

“Is that a gun in my hand?” Armie Hammer goes undercover in “Crisis.”

Who could not like a film where the lead villain — a short, bearded Quebecois drug dealer — is called Mother? (Hey, you! Put your hand down.)

Writer/director Nicholas Jarecki, whose previous effort, Arbitrage (2012), dealt with a troubled hedge-fund magnate, a role earning Richard Gere a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination, has now focused on the opioid epidemic. As noted on screen: “Over 100,000 people die from opioid overdoses every year, a figure that grows over 20% annually.”

Employing a triptych plotline, Jarecki’s passion project attacks from three semi-disparate perspectives. There’s a mother seeking revenge for the death of her teenage son; a university professor soul-searching on whether to reveal the results of his lab work that might cost the very drug company funding his research billions; and an undercover cop trying his best to upend a Canadian-based fentanyl operation.

The first two storylines, although rather familiar, are often engaging due to the highly committed performances of Evangeline Lilly and Gary Oldman.

Evangeline Lily gets “Lost” once again in “Crisis” with a superb performance.

Lilly is Claire Reiman, an architect once addicted to oxycodone, who’s now coping by…