‘Pain Hustlers’: Toronto Review

Dir: David Yates. US. 2023. 123mins

Opioid addiction remains a scourge in America, a health crisis that Pain Hustlers tackles in a frustratingly shallow fashion. Telling a fictionalised account of a true story documented in reporter Evan Hughes’ 2022 book of the same name, director David Yates examines a working-class single mother (played with real grit by Emily Blunt) who is hired at a struggling pharmaceutical company selling fentanyl to cancer patients and quickly discovering that her conscience bothers her less the richer she gets. The film follows a slick, predictable rise-then-fall narrative structure full of boisterous montages when things are going well and sombre music once the good times end, with only Blunt occasionally hinting at something deeper — how the have-nots will do anything to change their fortune, even if it means harming others who are equally as impoverished

A slick, predictable rise-then-fall narrative structure

Netflix premieres Pain Hustlers at the Toronto Film Festival, with a US theatrical release planned for October 20. (The film will be available on the streaming platform the following Friday.) Blunt is joined by Chris Evans and Andy Garcia, so star power will not be an issue. That said, expect middling reviews, although viewers may enjoy the story’s familiar trajectory and the characters’ amoral chase of the almighty dollar.

In 2011, in Tampa, Florida, Liza (Blunt) works as a dancer at a seedy strip club when she encounters Pete (Evans), who is impressed by her charisma and offers her a job at his company, Zanna Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical startup fighting off bankruptcy. Soon, Liza and Pete are meeting with local doctors, imploring them to prescribe their patients Lonafen – a pain medication containing fentanyl that works faster and is more effective than the leading competitor. Determined to pull herself and her daughter Phoebe (Chloe Coleman) out of poverty, Liza proves to be an excellent salesperson and Lonafen soon becomes in-demand, making everyone at the company fabulously wealthy.

Yates, who directed the final four Harry Potter pictures and the first three instalments in the Fantastic Beasts series, has not helmed a non-J.K. Rowling project since 2016’s The Legend Of Tarzan, so it is initially interesting to see his take on what is, essentially, a crime saga. Liza and Pete bribe doctors, like the unscrupulous Nathan (Brian d’Arcy James), to recommend Lonafen to their cancer patients, promising that it will greatly reduce their suffering. At first, Liza (who gets a commission on every prescription she helps to orchestrate) rationalises her unethical behaviour by reminding herself that their drug truly is superior, but she has a harder time accepting those justifications once people start getting addicted and overdosing. 

Blunt communicates Liza’s desperation to make something of herself after so many failures. Her ex is out of the picture, and she has been reduced to living in a rundown motel. She loves Phoebe – although it’s a shame how underutilised Coleman is - and Liza comes across as goodhearted but unlucky, just needing a break to change her circumstances. She thinks that Lonafen could offer that opportunity, but Blunt never lets us forget that it is not so much the money that matters to Liza but the dignity and respect it provides. As Liza’s egocentric, ne’er-do-well mother, who immediately tries to take advantage of her daughter once she gets rich, Catherine O’Hara suggests the years of parental neglect that led to Liza’s low self-esteem.

Occasionally, Wells Tower’s straightforward screenplay digs into profound themes — specifically, the notion that money and power, like pain medication, are ways for people to numb themselves, and can be just as addictive. But those grander ideas are eventually pushed aside as Pain Hustlers uncreatively segues from Zanna’s triumph to its ignominious downfall. Viewers will have seen enough films of this ilk to know that, when cocaine starts showing up at the company parties, it is the signal that everything will soon come crashing down. 

As a result, Blunt’s blue-collar edginess gets sanded down in the name of a programmatic plot that hits all the expected emotional beats. On cue, Liza will begin to question the morality of what they are doing — especially once the greedy head of the company, Dr. Jack Neel (an over-the-top Garcia), demands they increase profits by pushing into pain-related markets where Lonafen would be unnecessary. Not helping matters is Evans’ glib performance as a soulless salesman who does not care what happens to their customers, the actor lacking the magnetism that would make this shark appallingly riveting. Attempting to be an ironically entertaining cautionary tale about the evils of capitalism and the monstrousness of drug companies, Pain Hustlers fails to seduce or repel. This supposedly bitter pill goes down too easily.