Pain Hustlers (2023)

Directed by David Yates. Starring Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy García, Catherine O’Hara, Brian d’Arcy James, Jay Duplass, Chloe Coleman, Amit Shah, Aubrey Dollar, Britt Rentschler, Nick McNeil. [R]

Fictionalized take on a true story of shady business tactics taken by a failing pharmaceutical company to get their cancer pain medication prescribed by doctors—the “fentanyl spray” drug Lonafin stands in for Subsys, Andy García’s Dr. Neel stands in for John Kapoor, etc. Surprisingly toothless and derivative in its attack, as it could almost be described as Adam McKay’s The Wolf of Pharma Street, and glossing over the drug’s effect on the patients/victims, noting its addictiveness and high death rate almost as an afterthought between formulaic scenes of the boss’ paranoia unraveling and the criminal justice system closing in. Emily Blunt’s stripper-turned-sales-guru, Liza Drake, is hard to swallow (she gets way too skillful and knowledgeable about her no-experience job way too fast), so the actress’ reliable efforts go to waste on such a predictable rise-and-fall-and-redemption character arc. The real events chronicled in Evan Hughes’ book of the same name are mentioned at the very end, begging the question of why didn’t the filmmakers tackle this thing head on instead of making up whatever they wanted for a “slicker”, more easily-digestible show? Director David Yates also co-produced, his first such credit on a feature film.

39/100