Watch Pain Hustlers on Netflix // Buy the book (paid link)
Written by: Wells Tower (screenplay by) // Evan Hughes (based on the book by)
Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O'Hara, Andy Garcia, Jay Duplass
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A broke but ambitious single mom lands a lucrative opportunity at a nearly bankrupt pharmaceutical company, but sales of a potent new painkiller may lead to a federal criminal conspiracy.
Verdict
This isn't a new premise. People find a way to get rich by bending the rules, then they get greedy and break the rules. Eventually they're caught as the house of cards tumbles. Blunt and Evans do a great job, but their motivations are simple and generic. This doesn't dive deep enough to make them complete characters and the story is something we've seen a few times, both the subject and themes.
It depends.
Review
It's based on a true story, which just makes you think that every company developing opioid drugs must be breaking the law. So many of them have been fined millions of dollar. They're have been a few series dramatizing the matter.
Liza (Emily Blunt) runs into Pete (Chris Evans) at a strip club. She doesn't seem skilled at the job and we soon learn she's still new. Pete seems a bit smarmy, conducting business at a such a place, and he even offers Liza a job which seems more flirty than serious.
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| Emily Blunt, Chris Evans play Liza, Pete |
The movie goes out of its way to show that Liza is a hustler, mitigating her daughter's punishment at school into a reduced sentence. She takes Pete up on the job offer, and he revises her resume to ensure she's hired. She's a sales rep, which isn't an easy job. She just needs one doctor on board, and when she gets a doctor that's the turning point. Eliza and Pete skirt the law to make sure the doctor gets paid well, but they tell themselves they won't go too far while also reassuring themselves that every company does the same thing.
Soon Liza and Pete are looking for other sales people. They want hustlers, not college graduates with honors. They need people that are hard pressed, willing to go the extra mile for a sale. They want desperate sales people to go after desperate doctors.
It's clear Liza is doing well. She gets a fancy car, and soon lands a fancy apartment. She even gets her daughter into an overprice school. She overpays, noting that everyone is always trying to hustle.
When you make money, you can get away with a lot and cut corners. We've seen that happen in real life all too often. Even when Liza's background, or lack thereof, is revealed the owner, Dr. Neel (Andy Garcia), doesn't care because she is making him millions.
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| Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, Emily Blunt play Pete, Dr. Neel, Liza |
This is a familiar pattern. Characters find a get rich scheme that's dangerous, they get crazy rich, get more reckless, the process continues, and then you know things are going to break bad. You can't sustain the gains. Eventually the sales flatten, you do more to generate sales, and that impulsiveness leads to getting caught. With this industry, we know Liza and Pete will get caught because the whole pharma industry has been taken down and gotten caught. There's only one way this goes. Neel loves the money and gets greedy. He's not content with what they have, he wants more even though he doesn't need it, and it doesn't matter how they get it.
That's such a typical story. Pete is a generic duplicitous salesman, but Chris Evans does well with the role. Liza's mom is an interesting wrinkle. She's a burden that could undermine Liza, but it also seems a bit unnecessary, even comical in a movie that's not. Liza is the only one that warns the company to be cautious, but she relents when Pete and Neel refuse to slow down. The amount of money the company spends seems ridiculous, but it's not. At one point we see Pete in costume rapping at a conference, but things like that actually happened.
It's clear where this is going from nearly the start. The actors do a great job of carrying the characters, but there isn't a enough to distinguish this from the other tales of greed and downfall.
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