The Reel Review
America’s fentanyl epidemic takes center stage with connections drawn between Mexican drug lords, human trafficking, the many rival drug gangs fighting for control of Oklahoma, law enforcement and even some users of the highly addictive illegal drug… teenagers. James Badge Dale (The Departed), Ben Foster (Hell of High Water) and Oscar-winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter) star in this action/crime thriller based on actual events.
King Ivory is a gritty, low budget knockoff of the 2000 crime drama Traffic, with the same now-cliched tropes. (The main cop’s son and friends are all addicts – hardly shocking.) Writer/director John Swab combines his own personal challenges with drug addiction with actual events (the mass suffocation deaths of dozens of migrants), but the result is a surprisingly sluggish story riddled with corny dialogue and predictable plot twists.
Acting-wise, the cast does as good a job as possible given the mediocre story and unlikable characters. Hopelessly dreary and depressing, King Ivory is best suited for people obsessed with even the most mundane of drug crime thrillers.
REEL FACTS
• James Badge Dale is the son of actress Anita Morris (Ruthless People, Nine) who died of ovarian cancer in 1994 at the age of 50.
• King Ivory was one of Graham Greene’s final film roles. Greene (Wind River, Dances with Wolves, Maverick) died of natural causes after a lengthy illness in September 2025. He was 73.
• 53 migrants died in and around an abandoned tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas in June 2022 in the deadliest single incident of mass deaths stemming from human trafficking.
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