Popular reviews

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  Review by Tentin Quarantino ☭ 4

  Why are the sickest, most unhealthy people I know always the most medicated?

  "They need the drugs because they're unwell, dumbass!", I hear you say.

  To that, I say, "Well, if they're taking all those pills, why aren't they getting better? Isn't that the entire fucking point of taking a pill - so you're not unwell anymore?"

  This is why horror movies aren't scary anymore. No ghost or monster or creature can compete with the abomination that is the Unites States medical industrial complex.

  If you want to be well, you probably don't need a pill. You just need to eat actual food, stay active, get enough sleep, and stop consuming and absorbing toxic shit every day.

  It's not a coincidence that the sickest, most unhealthy people I know do none of these things.

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  Review by Jason Bailey ★

  Among the profound insights shared by filmmaker Chris Bell ('Bigger, Stronger, Faster') in this mind-blowing exposé of the prescription drug industry: “They’re destroying families.” (GET OUT.) “These doctor seem to be more concerned with profit than with healing.” (YA DON’T SAY.) “For Big Pharma, money is good.” (ALERT THE MEDIA.) These and other insights may come as a surprise to someone who knows absolutely nothing about this story — or who doesn’t watch Last Week Tonight, where John Oliver took down the industry with more wit and precision in 15 minutes than Bell can muster in 90. Along the way, he leverages a family tragedy and his own addiction to score cheap dramatic points, conveying it all in a stock-footage-and-naïve-voiceover style swiped wholesale from Michael Moore. One of his interview subjects sums it up best, answering one of Bell’s asinine and obvious questions: “Everybody who’s watching this knows the answer to that.”

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  Review by RickyHaze ★★★

  A very serious issue that isn't fully explored.

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  Review by Clayton Dillard ★

  The United States of America should be renamed the United States of Addiction according to director Chris Bell, whose new documentary, Prescription Thugs, constructs a feature-length thesis statement against Big Pharma by examining the lives of over a dozen people who've become addicted to prescription pills. Bell implicitly thinks, like contemporaries Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, and recent, self-anointed political constituent Russell Brand, that the most effective means for exposing conspiratorial big business is to linger with several cases of abuse, as each new face introduces a familiar story of perceived normalcy, a gradual turn to dependency, and an often tragic aftermath.

  Read the rest at Slant.

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  Review by vincels

  Pasting the format from his 2008 film Bigger, Stronger, Faster onto a film about prescription drugs, Bell seems to have un-polished his craft with Prescription Thugs. Whereas his debut interweaves himself and familal melodrama into the investigative documentary very vulnerably, this follow up has clunky instincts that result in shoe-horning reality television-esque personal woes with the broader investigation. The big 3 dramatic personal moments -- the filmmaker's brother dying, Bell's personal history with pharmaceuticals, and then the revelation that he's an ongoing addict -- are dropped like bombs that don't go off and then accelerate back into talking head testimonials from doctors, whistleblowers, and journalists. It must be said that Bell was ahead of the curve in this investigation of…

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  Review by ForenSeek ★★

  Essentially an attempt to re-capture the energy and insight of the director's film Bigger, Stronger, Faster (2008). Sadly, it seems the lightning didn't strike twice in the same spot, and implementing the same techniques as in that above mentioned film just makes it seem like the filmmaker only has one trick up his sleeve - and we've already seen it.

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  Review by JMReviews ★★★

  Doctor of Prescription Thuganomics.

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  Review by Chris ★★★

  Highly personal and heartbreaking, how deep can you really delve into the prescription drug epidemic with a meathead in a backwards hat in 82 minutes?

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  Review by Winona ★★★½

  While a lot of the information here is fairly entry-level, I still think this was nicely produced and it was made by someone who has an obvious drive to see something done about this issue.

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  Review by albinhansson ★★★

  Average movie, but the subject’s whats important here. Everybody should educate themselves on this.

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  Review by luanawerneck ★★

  Meio mixuruca.Tema legal, mas mal explorado

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  Review by Patrick Hao ★★

  Michael Moore is the Tarantino of doc filmmaking in that his popularity and influence has spawned a whole slew of piss-poor imitators in the mid to late 2000s. Chris Bell style, tone and humor is emblematic of Moore’s influence but lacks anything beyond surface. 

  Also LOL at the conclusive thesis being America is a nation of addicts while the doc spends 5 minutes of unregulated capitalism. But hey it is a Blaze distributed doc that has one minute on Reagan not being a saint amongst men.