Crisis
QUIVERAn Academy Awards win for Gary Oldman has seemingly caused a crisis of quality. Crisis, a crime thriller that boasts a strong cast coasting on an empty script, is a surprising release. Not just for its accumulation of talented individuals, most of who will go on to star in other, better features, but because it has managed to con them into a dreary and unsurprising mob feature. An anti-drug thriller that details very little about its own stance, but does try and concern itself with being a demo reel for director Nicholas Jarecki. There is an abundance of puns to drag out of that title, but Crisis does, obviously, find itself in a problem best described by its namesake.
Not least because of its opening or the constant spiral Jarecki finds himself on in trying to one-up a series of moments that feel like a forgotten Jason Bourne entry. Helicopters, snowy mountain tops, and barking police dogs that pave the way to grubby rooms with grubby people. That isn’t a comment on Armie Hammer, it is just happenstance that he leads Crisis into its dark heart. His performance as Jake Kelly is the usual chiselled-jaw action lead mentality that will no doubt foolishly undercut or oversell someone or something in his line of work. Crisis makes no mistake in accepting that that is its aim, but resigning itself to that acceptance is immediately telling of how little faith or interest this cast has in the project.
Considering how grand the cast is, that is more a sincere disappointment than something audiences can mock and revel in. Lily-Rose Depp and Evangeline Lilly, in particular, are doing well with the wasted script presented to them. They have the back and forth of addiction and how to solve it, with Hammer playing the sleazy agent in-between it all, linking all these pieces together as best he can. That is no small feat, granted, but it is not as if he gives it an earnest go either. Lilly gives a stunning performance in portions, measured moments where the waterworks are turned on but are given nowhere to go. The only thing worse than seeing a performer give it their all is seeing it go to waste, and Crisis seems content to waste strong detail. Had it not done so, it would have a sure-fire hit on its hands, and it is a shame to see how much goes wrong for the few attempting their best efforts.
Laying it on a little too thick, Crisis does not have the emotional persona or depth of field to convey anything but awkward riffs on drug culture and flat descriptions of how it can and will affect families. Buried deep within this Hammer-led discount thriller is an earnest tale of addiction, recovery, and the emotion at the heart of it. Crisis works best when it focuses on the Lilly portion of its effort. She steals the show, and not intentionally; she is just given enough time to tear up and work through the emotional side of this piece because, while it may be hard to believe, there is an emotive and responsive side to Crisis. Jarecki just doesn’t tap into it enough.