‘King Ivory’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: John Swab. US. 2024. 129mins 

Aiming to be a blistering examination of America’s unwinnable War on Drugs, the high-octane King Ivory is intense without being insightful. The eighth feature from writer-director John Swab takes us to Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the new battlegrounds between overmatched law enforcement and well-armed criminals, who are getting rich selling fentanyl to eager customers. James Badge Dale gives a suitably gritty performance as a cop determined to wipe out these drug dealers — unaware that his own son is an addict — but this action-thriller is too easily in thrall to its tough-guy posturing, resulting in a picture that incorrectly believes it’s delivering bitter truths.

There is a noticeable lack of originality to this violent tale of cops and crooks

King Ivory premieres in Venice’s Horizons Extra section, the first of Swab’s features to unspool on the Lido. (His recent pictures Ida Red and Candy Land launched out of Locarno, while Little Dixie played in Rotterdam.) Alongside Dale in the cast are Ben Foster, Graham Greene and Melissa Leo, which will help raise visibility for a film that certainly boasts commercial elements. (In addition, Swab’s acknowledgement of his own addiction battles could further drive awareness.) But King Ivory’s familiar B-movie trappings may curtail theatrical prospects, making streaming more of a favourable landing spot.

Dale plays Layne, who leads an elite drug-enforcement team in Tulsa which, despite being only a medium-sized city in the American Midwest, has become a hotbed for fentanyl. Running the dangerous Indian Brotherhood from prison, Holt (Graham Greene) controls the regional drug trade, working closely with the Irish mob which is spearheaded by Smiley (Foster) and his mother Ginger (Leo). Layne has these syndicates in his sights, but the evils of fentanyl hit closer to home once he discovers his rebellious teenage son Jack (Jasper Jones) is hooked, leading to deadly consequences.

Swab specialises in low-budget genre fare, and the writer-director has explained that King Ivory is especially personal for him considering that he is now nearly a decade sober after being addicted to opiates for almost as long. And yet, his film fails to feel especially searing or authentic. These disparate characters, all linked by the scourge of fentanyl, are ornery and hard-bitten individuals, but there is a noticeable lack of originality to this violent tale of cops and crooks. Whether it’s the predictable settings or the Traffic-esque twist that our crusading hero has an addict for a child, King Ivory rarely surprises – which only makes its halfhearted commentary on the War of Drugs more frustrating.

With editor Andrew Aaronson energetically cutting from storyline to storyline, Swab creates a sense of constant propulsion — not to mention modest suspense as we anticipate the inevitable moment when these different plot strands intertwine. And certainly the testosterone-fueled shootouts are muscular in their execution.

But King Ivory largely tries to seduce the viewer through its bleak depiction of US law enforcement’s endless attempt to bring drug dealers to justice, a futile undertaking when the criminal organisations keep evolving and the fashionable drugs constantly change. (In one of the film’s most ironic observations, Holt notes that heroin usage has gone down only because a younger generation of addicts wants the hip new high, which is fentanyl.) The picture’s superficially adrenalised approach is meant to be undercut by Layne’s despairing realisation that nothing he does will curb America’s opioid epidemic.

But for that sad resignation to resonate, Layne and King Ivory’s other characters would need to be more sharply drawn. Unfortunately, Swab is better at jolting the plot forward than in populating it with complex individuals. Foster’s sullen Smiley only has one distinguishing quality — the artificial voice box he uses to speak — and the rest of the supporting cast consists of simplistic B-movie types. Greene has some nicely menacing moments, and Dale oozes badass swagger as a macho cop who is blindsided by his son’s revelation, but Swab fails to put a human face on an ongoing tragedy. King Ivory diagnoses a legitimate social ill, but too often uses it as grist for a standard shoot-’em-up.