In this documentary, director Chris Bell turns his camera on the abuse of prescription drugs and, ultimately, himself. It's his hard hitting and thought provoking expose of Big Pharma, its marketing practices and their impact on the staggering level of addiction to prescription drugs in North America.
Engaging and enraging but also, alas, consistently superficial, it's a hot-button work whose easily digested nonfiction methods will appeal to mainstream documentary audiences, even if they also leave viewers hungry for greater substance.
Even before a "do as I say, not as I do" twist costs it all credibility, "Prescription Thugs" is a not very good documentary about a very important subject.
If you want to see a documentary about the director's life and how drugs affected him personally, then go see this film. If you're looking for something about what society can do to combat a problem that has turned into an epidemic, look the other way.
Bell takes it personally as well as publicly with the tragic death of his own brother. And what exactly is going down with the deadly prescription drug epidemic, and pharmaceutical corporations in league with doctors and drugstores raking in billions.
