The convolution commences at the Canadian border, with a chase resulting in the capture of a young man carrying a backpack filled with pills. This sets in motion the bringing together of three dissimilar characters through their various connections to the opioid crisis. A drug-trafficking DEA agent (Armie Hammer) works with the Montreal mafia and a pair of Armenian crime lords on a scheme to smuggle fentanyl across the Canadian border. A Detroit architect and recovering Oxycodone addict (Evangeline Lilly) travels to Canada to investigate her late son’s short-lived career as a drug runner and to ferret out the real reason behind his death. Lastly, there is producer and star Gary Oldman, playing a college professor who discovers the “non-habit forming pain killer” he’s about to endorse is not only highly addictive, it increases dependence threefold. Convoluted though the plot may be, it was this one glaring snag in logic that left me stressing. All of the lab mice tested for the drug died within ten days. Why would big pharma endorse a product that killed its clients, when there’s more money to be made off of addiction? The sophomore feature from Arbitrage auteur Nicholas Jarecki relies too heavily on stereotypes (or is it Hammer?); Lily suffers with the best of them, and Oldman knows just how to pucker his lips around a whistle and blow. But as directed, the bad guys are so damn obvious. At a celebratory gala. drug company infiltrator Meg (Veronica Ferres) listens as her hapless boss (Martin Donovan) waxes misty-eyed with sentimentality over news that his father’s dream drug is at last becoming a reality. Her contemptuous eye-rolling packs all the subtlety of a spit take. And speaking of a bad poker tell, when her cohort (Luke Evans) tries to pressure Oldman into signing off on a revised contract in exchange for $780,000, he closes with, “It’s pretty standard stuff” and notes that the sooner it’s signed, the sooner the funds will be available. Other than the need of a few plot clarifying rewinds, there’s not much here that you haven’t seen before or need to see again. (2021) — Scott Marks