'Ben Is Back': Well-Acted Addiction Drama Loses Its Way
The first half is a tense, painfully real family drama about the lingering toll of opioid addiction; the second half lurches into thriller territory thick with stock types and cliches.
When movies go wrong, it usually happens gradually, a slow devolution borne of a series of missteps or a conceit that couldn't be sustained over the long haul. With Ben is Back, the shift is remarkably sudden, like Wile E. Coyote speeding off the edge of a cliff, hovering for just a second, and then plummeting into the canyon below.
What begins as a wrenching study of opioid addiction, about a mother who never runs spliced together with the last two reels of . There are two qualitatively different movies here, connected by a missing dog.
