Pain Hustlers (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – Liza dreams of a better life for her and her daughter so she gets a job at a bankrupt pharmacy and Liza’s guts catapult the company and her into the high life not knowing that she will soon be in the middle of a criminal conspiracy.

My Take – With notable TV shows like Dopesick (2021) and Painkiller (2023) renewing interest into America’s opioid crisis and the cynical workings of big pharma, it was an eventuality that a more condensed approach would soon be taken in the form of a feature.

Loosely based on the Insys Therapeutics scandal, this Wells Tower written Netflix release is inspired by Evan Hughes’ 2022 book ‘Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup’, which was originally a New York Times Magazine article in 2018, the film is expertly honed for mainstream appeal and fulfills the basic requirement of delivering complex information in a snappy and understandable way, particularly using the accessible but now rather tired device of cutting faux documentary interviews with key characters into a conventional piece of storytelling.

But given the star cast and skillful director at the helm, it could and should have been much better.

Directed by David Yates, who has spent most of the last two decades helming some of the best ‘Harry Potter’ films and its prequels, the film aims to work as an opioid rendition of the Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and The Big Short (2015), which means it’s entertaining with a clear purpose, but it is also really hard to deny that by using the said approach it finds itself stuck between the worlds of breezy satire and hard truth. Drowning out the more serious aspects in favor of being more comedic.

Sure, what’s novel here is that the film focuses not on the victims of the aggressively sold cancer pain medication at the core of the story, but on the team of ambitious, money-hungry drug reps and company execs who stop at nothing to hawk their product to unscrupulous doctors.

Yet, you’ll be hard-pressed to remember anything else by the time the credits are done rolling as it lacks the emotional heft that a real-life story might have delivered.

The story follows Liza Drake (Emily Blunt), a single mother, a part-time stripper, and a full-time hustler struggling to make ends meet, while trying to figure out the next step for her and her young, rebellious daughter Phoebe (Chloe Coleman), who was recently suspended from school following an arson incident.

Living in her sister’s garage with her mother Jackie (Catherine O’Hara), Liza’s gift of gab thankfully comes in handy when she ends up chatting with Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a cocky sales rep from Zanna Therapeutics, who in his drunk and chatty state ends up offering her a job.

Though she hesitates at first, Liza ends up reaching at the cut-rate startup, selling a painkiller called Lonafin for cancer patients that works twice as fast as fentanyl but only has one-tenth the market penetration due to stiff competition. While she gets the job and meets the founder of Zanna, Dr. Jack Neel (Andy Garcia), despite her lack of experience in sales. Luckily for her and Pete, there’s an opioid crisis looming on the horizon that’s about to make their painkiller extremely desirable and make them extremely rich.

Undoubtedly, director David Yates keeps the film pacy and purposeful. The first half is particularly the best and most entertaining part of the film, showcasing his confident direction in navigating Liza’s initial struggle to her unlikely success in driving the sales of Lonafen after working for Zanna.

The film also succeeds in unpacking the exploitation of the pharma sales business, and the wider dysfunction of the American health care and legal systems that allows it to go unchecked. While the subsequent melodramatic excess and an underwhelming third act diluted the momentum of the story, the film remains reasonably watchable.

The film swerves into darker territory in the final act, yet it never feels organic and seems more focused on redeeming Liza. It’s too concerned with conventional storytelling and the need for a character to root for that, even when Liza is doing dodgy things.

While she’s along for the ride until her moral compass is truly tested, we never really see her become corrupted by the big pharma lifestyle. Liza may enjoy her new apartment or being able to buy her mother a new Mercedes, but she’s never truly shown as one of the vicious ones. Instead, she’s merely providing for her epileptic daughter.

Simply told, we’re meant to identify with our protagonist rather than condemn her. It’s a novel spin on this sort of story, lending a little bit of freshness to the proceedings. But it fails to land in any significant manner, thanks to the lack of proper characterization.

But somewhere between the shortcomings of this film, we have Emily Blunt who radiates with her magnetic and engaging performance. Chris Evans continues to get as far away from Captain America as humanly possible with another undemanding yet enjoyable irredeemable asshole.

Andy García leaves quite an impression as the sketchy founder. While in other roles, Catherine O’Hara, Brian d’Arcy James, Jay Duplass, Amit Shah and Chloe Coleman provide entertaining support. On the whole, ‘Pain Hustlers’ is a formulaic yet mesmerizing drama that is glossily watchable.