King Ivory – Review

Featuring plots about drug trafficking, penitentiary life, special force cop teams, street survival and family drama, King Ivory has a lot of ground to cover. While it may have been a stronger flick by narrowing its focus, it dedicates enough story and acting chops to bring these themes to life. Considering how interrelated the elements all are, I understand the desire to include them in the film’s progression, despite some shifts in pacing as it plays out.

A dark and gritty crime tale is presented in King Ivory, as multiple lives are forever altered by drugs. Over the last decade, access to Fentanyl from Asia decentralized the Mexican cartels, consolidating the many big families into just two strong players. But… in addition to them, over two hundred smaller armed groups have formed to push products across the border into the large U.S. market. The nature of the drug being over a hundred times stronger than heroin and extremely hard to detect makes it a popular product to flood the streets of America. Here comes new waves of crime, addictions, and overdoses.

“King Ivory” aka Fentanyl is picked up by traffickers in who reel it in from floating bags in the ocean, placing it in their speedboat. It has been dumped by submarines, or other vessels. Ramón Garza (Mando) leads his crew to it, and once on shore they process the product. Meanwhile, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a drug den is raided by Layne West (Dale) and his narcotics unit.

At home for the night, West’s wife Tess (Quartin) is already asleep, and his son Jack (Jones) is talking to his girlfriend on the phone. His home life is much less chaotic than his extremely dangerous life as a cop. Or so he thinks, as Jack and his peers wind up with access to some hard drugs…

In the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, George ‘Smiley’ Greene (Foster) is getting out soon, and he gets a request from a gang leader Holt Lightfeather (Greene) to get some work done before he is sprung. This favor also sets him up when he is free with opportunities for big money. What will happen when he gets out? As characters collide and storylines ramp up, can Oklahoma survive the ravages of the drug trade?

These characters may be on one side of the law or the other, however they are all well-defined people with lives outside of their trades, such as families. This gives them all motivations to keep their loved ones healthy and safe while donning an atmosphere of reality as well as showcasing reason for their actions.

King Ivory runs a little long, and packs in plenty of character time for its larger cast. This does keep the pace mostly slow despite a few sparks of shootout action and cop chases. Plenty of solemn and realistic moments are sprinkled in to show the reality of the world of fentanyl. It feels a lot like a new generation’s version of Traffic, but doesn’t quite have as strong of a story backing its progression.

The rippling effect of drugs and their communities is on full display. The characters and their families are all caught up in the whirlwind of chaos associated with addiction and not everyone will come out clean. Definitely not the feel-good picture of the year, King Ivory propels itself along with a stark take on the trenches of new powerful products and the money and violence that comes with them. It is well acted by everyone involved, and its story is told competently.