Nineteen Hundred Eighties

#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’ Review: A Brisk Look Back at a CrisisVeteran documentarian Stanley Nelson crafts a somewhat cursory primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.A scene from the documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy.”Credit…NetflixJan. 12, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETCrack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyDirected by Stanley NelsonDocumentary, Crime, History1h 29mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As its alliterative mouthful of a title suggests, the new Netflix documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy” takes on a many-headed beast. Racial injustice, economic inequities, police corruption, media ethics and foreign-policy scandals are all crammed — a bit too cursorily — into Stanley Nelson’s brisk primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.[embedded content]Told in eight chapters, the film begins with some scene-setting bits of archival footage. Speeches by President Ronald Reagan and clips from the 1987 drama “Wall Street” capture the era’s free-market capitalism, while its underside is illustrated by images of impoverished inner cities and the hip-hop that emerged from there. Former dealers explain that crack, a cheaper and more potent variant of cocaine, offered destitute youth a get-rich-quick scheme. The drug suddenly became more available than ever in the United States in the ’80s, which the movie links to shady C.I.A. dealings during the Iran-contra affair.In the film’s strongest moments, former peddlers, users, journalists and scholars unravel the narratives, often propelled by the media, that led to a disproportionate targeting of people of color during the war on drugs. A dealer recalls with horror how D.E.A. agents persuaded him to lure a teenager into buying crack in front of the White House just so President George H.W. Bush could have a cautionary tale to use in a televised speech.But Nelson tries to cover too much ground too fast, leading to some tonal fuzziness: In a too-brief segment on Black women’s exploitation during the crack era, a dealer’s seemingly amused recollection of how women would trade sexual favors for a hit goes oddly uncontextualized. A narrower focus might have allowed the film to better tease out such knotty material.Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More