‘Painkiller’ does an impressive job of telling a dark and gripping story about a tragic chapter of modern American history.
The prescription painkiller OxyContin was released by Purdue Pharma in 1995; the six-part TV series Painkiller, created by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster and directed by Peter Berg, was released by Netflix in 2023. During the intervening 28 years, Purdue’s flagship product brought even greater riches to the company’s already rich president, Richard Sackler; brought relief to a good many patients suffering from severe pain that was otherwise untreatable; and brought tragedy to countless families as legitimate patients became addicts and then death statistics and as perfectly healthy people, many of them very young, began using the drug recreationally and, caught in the grip of its addictive power, ended up in morgues all over America.
I watched this flick. It was good. What amazes me is that while the Sacklers have been publicly shunned not one of them has been jailed.
