Pain Hustlers Review: Delve Into The Issues It Would Like To Bring To The Fore
Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, Andy Garcia
Directed By: David Yates
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 2.5/5 (two and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Pain Hustlers, a dramatic film presented at the last Toronto International Film Festival, is available on Netflix starting October 27th. Based on the article of the same name by Evan Hughes, published in the New York Times, and directed by David Yates (a director known mainly for his contribution to the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts sagas), the film represents the debut in the world of cinema since acclaimed writer Wells Tower, with a screenplay that was paid a whopping $50 million by the streaming giant. After the series of films that pointed the finger at the crimes committed by the world of finance and banking (The Big Short, Panama Papers) in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the attention of recent cinema productions, and certain television, with busy but still Hollywood subjects, would seem to have been completely monopolized by the serious problem of addiction to opioid drugs that has hit the United States. A real epidemic that has destroyed millions of families, causing an average of 45 deaths per day in 2021 alone.
Inspired by a New York Times article by journalist Evan Hughes that later became a book, Pain Hustlers revolves around the rise of the fictional Zanna Therapeutics (based on the real Insys Therapeutics), a pharmaceutical company responsible for a dangerous model business that has contributed to what is infamously known as the opioid crisis in the United States. The protagonist of the events is Liza Drake (played by Emily Blunt), a single mother in financial difficulty who, thanks to her skills and uncommon determination, will be able to make a career by contributing to the spread of a dangerous analgesic drug derived from opium. Alongside Blunt, we find actors of the caliber of Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, and Catherine O’Hara. Instead, it dedicates itself too diligently to wanting to resemble a bad copy of The Wolf of Wall Street, while giving the audience characters who end up being caricatures of themselves. The only survivor of this massacre is Emily Blunt.
Pain Hustlers Review: The Story Plot
Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) is a working-class single mother trying to make ends meet – with little success – by working in a strip club. Right here, she meets the pharmaceutical representative Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) who, impressed by the woman’s communication skills, offers her to work with him at Zanna Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company directed by the eccentric Jack Neel (Andy Garcia). Liza’s job is as simple in words as it is complex in reality: she manages to get doctors to prescribe Lonafen, a drug for the treatment of cancer pain based on Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. Despite her inexperience in the sector, the woman immediately proves herself to be extremely capable and she takes Zanna Therapeutics from the risk of bankruptcy to being one of the main companies in the pharmaceutical market. Despite the sudden success and the replenished bank account, however, Liza will soon find herself faced with the truth of the facts: Lonafen is not as harmless as they would like to believe, and she could be an accomplice to a criminal conspiracy.
Pain Hustlers chooses to tell this plague from the point of view of the character of Liza Drake, played by Emily Blunt (recently seen alongside Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer). A single mother with a daughter suffering from epileptic seizures (Chloe Coleman), Liza tries to make ends meet by working as a lap dancer in a not-exactly-chic club. It is right at the bar counter of her squalid workplace where Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a representative of a pharmaceutical company, notices her exceptional persuasive skills. The man immediately enlists her, with the promise of handsome profits, to convince doctors to prescribe Lonafen, a powerful opioid created by Dr., to their patients. Jack Neel (Andy Garcia). Success comes quickly, between sports cars and lavish company parties, but things soon get out of hand: greed leads the company to push for the drug additive to be prescribed even for minor pathologies, resulting in a disproportionate number of people enslaved from addiction, with even lethal consequences.
Pain Hustlers Review and Analysis
I don’t know how a film about the opioid crisis, the greed of human nature, money, pharmaceutical companies, and most of all injustice can be so soulless. Yet Pain Hustlers succeeds in this difficult task. The characters are too little explored, and the surface is too smooth, and distant. It doesn’t anger as much as it should, it doesn’t take as much as it could on paper. Even Liza Drake, who should be the moral compass of the film, the one who is overcome by the desire for wealth after a life of hardship but then has remorse, remains a cold character, whose inner workings we can only glimpse. The funny accents and eccentricities aren’t enough to plug the holes, nor are the lights and musical montages. This film is missing something, and you can feel it.
Pain Hustlers chooses to stage its story with narrative tools similar to those used by films like The Wolf of Wall Street, with a voice-over with winking tones and some over-the-top moments. Like the film directed by Martin Scorsese, here too the parable of a loser who decides to play dirty to achieve success is told, chasing his distorted model of the American dream which is often intertwined – even willingly – with fraudulent and criminal methods. The difference lies in the final redemption of Liza’s character, ready to denounce the wrongdoings of her company, once the serious effects of her actions on the victims have been discovered.
Unfortunately, everything is written and directed in the most tiring way possible, without a minimum of personality. Let’s add a lack of originality at the basis of the subject, which re-proposes a topic – as mentioned above – already at the center of many other recent audiovisual products (Dopesick). The usual series of greedy pharmaceutical companies, corruption, destroyed families, and armies of attractive and naive representatives that we have recently also seen in another production, also by Netflix: the miniseries Painkiller. Despite the performance of the always-good Emily Blunt, it is difficult to promote a film like Pain Hustlers, bland and banal in almost every aspect.
The problem is that Subsys was a cancer pain spray that used fentanyl as the main ingredient. That is a real drug. The story is made even more scandalous by the fact that the company used an extensive “speaker program” to boost its sales. That is, doctors who were paid to promote the product to their colleagues. He paid doctors around the United States to prescribe a potentially very dangerous drug to patients. In 2020, Kapoor was sentenced to 66 months in prison for bribing doctors. The problem with the film, however, is the staging of the story. Fake documentaries made the actors “narrate” the story and the events that happened. There are a few things that can be saved in Pain Hustlers, first of all, Emily Blunt’s performance. The good feeling, she has with Chris Evans’ character is palpable and you can feel it very well when the two are on stage together.
Emily Blunt was great in her performance. The actress in Pain Hustlers did her best, certainly not supported by too-linear character writing. Liza Drake is a woman who has a sick daughter to look after and who works as a stripper at night to get by. What happens to her and her rise from failed stripper to successful manager who saves a fortune in just a few months is too hasty. It should be underlined that Blunt was good in her interpretation, giving that extra verve to her character. The same can be said for Chris Evans who tried to do the best she could. Unfortunately, even in this case, the writing of his Pete Brenner did not help the actor who at times seemed to have a moral and suddenly betrays his initial traits to behave oppositely. As mentioned, the main problem with Pain Hustlers is the writing, too many things happen quickly without a real construction. The character of Evans’ character, but also the change in that of the president of the pharmaceutical company played by Andy Garcia. A film that had potential that he threw away to imitate The Wolf of Wall Street.
Despite many problems, Pain Hustlers is not a bad film. Other films disappoint, but given the source material, they could certainly have done better. Perhaps, if we hadn’t been too inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street, taking just a few things from Martin Scorsese’s film, we would have found an original soul and concept. Instead, being too inspired by a very successful film like that of the Italian-American director diverted viewers from the true message that Pain Hustlers wanted to convey. Medicines are a business, and what’s behind them is always to make as much money as possible without considering the negative effects on people, and on those who use them to relieve pain due to serious illnesses. This was the concept around which to build a film. A raw and harsh message, without making too many turns, going straight to the point and what the film directed by David Yates wanted to tell us. A film that meets the mark, but doesn’t go beyond that, bringing home a couple of hours of entertainment.
Pain Hustlers is the kind of star-studded product that Netflix pushes for a couple of weeks, only to be quickly forgotten by audiences. Despite the interesting material and an exceptional cast to say the least, the film directed by David Yates lacks bite and does nothing to delve into the issues it would like to bring to the fore, from the aforementioned opioid crisis to the problems of the American healthcare system. The latter is organized in such a way that it can be easily exploited by companies like Zanna Therapeutics, but instead of highlighting the sick aspects of the system, it only shows how certain people manage to circumvent it through corruption and the threat, only to then not receive sentences severe enough to act as a deterrent. What could therefore have been a constructive criticism ends up becoming just a very bad copy of The Wolf of Wall Street, between hedonistic sequences, excessive parties, and excessive drug consumption. All scenes which, among other things, fail in any way to involve or entertain the audience.
It is therefore normal that in the face of all this, even a cast made up of names of the caliber of Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, Andy Garcia, and Emily Blunt ends up succumbing. As we have already said the latter is the only one who manages to emerge with her Liza Drake, while the other characters end up becoming only caricatures of themselves. Chris Evans is nothing short of wasted for Pain Hustlers, with a role that is obvious ad nauseam, no emotion, and lines that to define as unmemorable would be an understatement. Andy Garcia’s Jack Neel can encapsulate every type of cliché imaginable that we could pin on the head of a corrupt company and Catherine O’Hara as Liza’s mother simply doesn’t make sense to exist, through no fault of her own. actress. Really a big shame.
Pain Hustlers Review: The Last Words
Pain Hustlers lacks bite and fails to delve into the issues it would like to bring to the fore, from the aforementioned opioid crisis to the problems of the American healthcare system. Instead, it dedicates itself too diligently to wanting to resemble a bad copy of The Wolf of Wall Street, while giving the audience characters who end up being caricatures of themselves. The only survivor of this massacre is Emily Blunt. Pain Hustlers stages another story centered on the greed of pharmaceutical companies and the serious opioid crisis in the USA, already the subject of many recent high productions. Using narrative tools similar to those of films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, the film distributed by Netflix is unoriginal and mostly insipid. Even Emily Blunt’s excellent performance can’t save it.
Pain Hustlers Review: Delve Into The Issues It Would Like To Bring To The Fore - Filmyhype
Director: Pain Hustlers Review
Date Created: 2023-10-27 16:39
2.5
Pros
- Strong performances from Emily Blunt and Chris Evans
- David Yates' direction is assured and stylish
- The film does a good job of capturing the complex world of big pharma
Cons
- The film's tone is uneven, at times veering into melodrama
- The film lacks focus, trying to do too much in too little time
- The film does not adequately address the devastating impact that OxyContin has had on American society
