Money, power, notoriety, a misplaced but earnest desire to help, and to do good, and to alleviate pain. Such is the chemistry of “Pain Hustlers,” released Friday October 27 on Netflix. An impressive cast does the best with what they’re given, but the predictability of the script frequently leaves them without room to stretch into what could become really outrageous performances, to match the utter madness of the true story upon which these events are based. Loosely adapted from the book The Hard Sell by Evan Hughes (later renamed to match the film’s title) which itself was inspired by a 2018 article written and researched by Hughes, “Pain Hustlers” follows a pharmaceutical company rising through the ranks selling painkillers, until their ruse backfires on them. It was based on the Insys Therapeutics fraud case, in which executives were found responsible for bribing doctors to prescribe highly addictive, fentanyl-
based opioids meant for breakthrough cancer pain to individuals who were not diagnosed as such. It was notable for being one of the first instances of pharmaceutical executives convicted in a criminal case during the initial height of the opioid crisis.
Liza Drake, played with aplomb by Emily Blunt, is a single mom and high school dropout who has very earnest desires to rise above her circumstances. After a chance meeting with pharma executive Pete Brennan (played with palpable smarm by Chris Evans, with an accent leaning heavily into his New England roots), the two embark on a desperate journey that ends up putting them at the center of a landmark criminal trial. Liza’s giddy but misplaced optimism spurs her rise to the top, but she struggles with climbing the rungs of the ladder of power. She finds that when you get to a higher threshold there’s just other, larger obstacles standing in your way. By the final third of the movie, Liza’s in over her head as her comfortable life starts to unravel in the wake of her professional missteps.
The often deadpan humor only occasionally works in the story’s favor; it’s clear that this film took inspiration from another, very notable movie depicting the debauchery and deception of a company, and its carelessness in the face of a criminal trial that affects the lives of “regular people.” Andy García’s Dr. Neel, the head of the company, and Catherine O’Hara as Liza’s mom, Jackie, provide eccentricity that feels authentic and welcome, if perhaps a bit tonally dissonant. Black and white interviews inserted throughout the story do a lot of expository “wrapping up” which, depending on whether you like having such things painstakingly outlined, will either lift your viewing experience, or make it more cumbersome.
To make a film that aims to tackle the severity of the opioid crisis in a meaningful way requires more focus on the individuals and families going through that experience firsthand. How bad do we really feel for the supposed protagonists (literal antagonists in real life) whose greed contributed to the problems they faced, in comparison to the lives of the people directly affected by this drug scheme? We’re offered glimpses of this through the families of Sidney and Camille, and Matt and Kate, but they appear to be treated as footnotes in the larger story of the fictional
Zanna Therapeutics executives. To focus more on the real lives torn apart by this intricate deceit would have heightened the drama of the story.