Adding as somewhat unique spin on the slew of features and documentaries about the opioid crisis, director David Yates (taking a break from the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beast cinematic universes) brings us the based-on-a-true-story Pain Hustlers. The film tracks the career of Liza Drake (Emily Blunt), a single mother who is struggling financially and gets an opportunity to leave her working-class life behind to work for a start-up pharmaceutical company as a sales rep. The drug she’s pushing is a new pain-killing medication for cancer patients that reportedly is not addictive, begins working almost immediately, and is less destructive to the body in general than its counterparts. The problem is, the drug is competing against more established ones from massive pharmaceutical companies that have cornered the market on pain killers. But Liza believes in the drug’s inventor and company head, Dr. Neel (Andy Garcia), and the head sales rep Pete Brenner (Chris Evans, in full snake mode), and before long, her natural charm and good looks make her a rainmaker at the company.
Written by Wells Tower and Evan Hughes, Pain Hustlers digs deep into Liza’s family, including her teenage daughter (Chloe Coleman, Dungeons & Dragons), whose worsening medical condition makes Liza more motivated to make money, even if she has to bend the rules a bit in terms of bribing doctors and making claims about the drug that weren’t true. Liza even gets her shady mother (Catherine O’Hara) hired by the company, figuring if her mom is going to play the con artist, she might as well do it for her team. The way the company almost imperceptibly slides from vaguely unethical behavior to illegal and dangerous racketeering schemes is the core of the film. It’s the frog in boiling water situation for Liza, in particular, because she wants, above all else, to maintain an honesty for the sake of pain sufferers. She’s not the one writing the prescriptions, but her many doctor clients (including her first major convert, Dr. Lydell, played by Brian d’Arcy James, whose road to riches the film also tracks) almost don’t have a choice when the money and other perks start rolling in.
Pain Hustlers is a movie about chipping away at one’s values, and Blunt’s sharp, layered performance does most of the heavy lifting in places where the standard-issue screenplay lets us down. The film gets less interesting when Dr. Neel starts to lose his mind to conspiracy theories and other rich-guy paranoias. When the bad guys start acting bad, the movie loses its value as a cautionary tale. It’s easy to see why Liza might go to the authorities when Garcia won’t give her a loan to help with her daughter’s medical costs, instead telling her to use the opportunity as a motivation to work harder and more creatively. He’s become a monster, rather than a person caught up in the whirlwind of greed and power. And the way that Pete seems to blindly follow Dr. Neel makes no sense at times; I kept waiting for a hidden explanation for this unwarranted devotion, and it never comes.
Many of these stories about drug companies doing bad things that end up getting patients killed have their own distinctive beginnings, but they all end mostly the same, and that’s how Pain Hustlers is structured as well. You want to see Liza come out of this unscathed for her daughter’s sake, but she willingly participated in this endeavor, so getting away with it free and clear doesn’t seem right either. I guess what ends up happening to her is a decent compromise, but it left me a bit cold. Naturally, we get the traditional end-credits update on most of the major characters from the story, but even that doesn’t quite satiate the need for a satisfying conclusion to this story. A mixed bag for me, but any excuse to watch Blunt pull off a character like Liza makes it mostly worth watching.
The film begins streaming Friday on Netflix.
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