In recent years, the opioid crisis has provided fertile ground for filmmakers to explore America’s most devastating health crisis, producing works like Dopesick and The Crime of the Century that shine a light on corporate greed and human suffering. Netflix’s Pain Hustlers, directed by David Yates and adapted from Evan Hughes’ book Pain Hustlers (originally The Hard Sell), seeks to join this canon. With a sharp cast led by Emily Blunt and Chris Evans, the film tackles the rise and fall of a shady pharmaceutical company at the heart of the crisis. Yet, despite its clear ambition and flashy execution, Pain Hustlers stumbles, never quite finding its footing between moral inquiry and comedic farce.
At its core, Pain Hustlers is a fictionalized account of the downfall of Insys Therapeutics. This real-life pharmaceutical company profited off a fentanyl-based painkiller through ethically bankrupt marketing schemes. Blunt’s Liza Drake, a single mother struggling to make ends meet, is recruited by the charismatic Pete Brenner (Evans) into Zanna Therapeutics, a stand-in for Insys. Despite having no medical background, Liza quickly rises through the ranks, using questionable sales tactics to push Zanna’s fentanyl alternative, Lonafen, onto doctors. As the company’s success spirals, so do its ethical boundaries until Liza and Pete face the human cost of their hustle.
What Pain Hustlers wants to be, however, is far from clear. Is it a biting satire, skewering the pharmaceutical industry’s ruthless pursuit of profit, or a sobering morality tale about the devastation wrought by the opioid epidemic? Yates seems to aspire to both, borrowing the manic energy of films like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short while also trying to engage with the gravity of the opioid crisis. But the result is a muddled blend of tones that neither shocks nor illuminates.
The film’s use of a post-collapse documentary framing device, with characters narrating their version of events in flashback, underscores its identity crisis. Pete’s snarky voiceovers and Liza’s reflections aim for humor, yet they fail to land with the sharpness of Adam McKay’s The Big Short. Meanwhile, scenes depicting the tragic fallout of Zanna’s practices—patients hooked on fentanyl derivatives, lives shattered—are jarringly juxtaposed with comedic banter and fast-paced montages of Liza’s rags-to-riches story. The result is tonal whiplash: a film that wants to have its cake and eat it too, laughing at the absurdity of corporate greed and asking us to feel the weight of its consequences.
To her credit, Blunt tries to elevate the material, infusing Liza with a blend of vulnerability, desperation, and moral ambiguity. Liza’s journey from a broke single mother to a high-powered pharma rep has the potential to be a fascinating character study, but the script doesn’t give her enough depth to explore her internal conflict. Is she simply over her head, or is she complicit in the destruction she helps unleash? The film waffles on this question, confusing Liza’s moral compass.
Chris Evans, meanwhile, revels in his role as Pete, a slick, morally bankrupt salesman who seems to have walked straight out of a Scorsese film. His performance is entertaining but ultimately shallow—Pete is more caricature than character, a smarmy embodiment of corporate greed with little to say beyond his surface charm. As Liza’s mother, Catherine O’Hara brings her usual comedic flair, but even she can’t save the film from its lack of focus. Instead, like much of Pain Hustlers, O’Hara’s character feels underwritten, a missed opportunity in a story that desperately needed more emotional grounding.
One of the film’s most glaring weaknesses is its reluctance to commit to its subject matter fully. The opioid crisis, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, is a profoundly serious topic, yet Pain Hustlers seems hesitant to engage with it beyond surface-level platitudes. The film flirts with the ethical complexities of the pharmaceutical industry but shies away from digging deeper into the systemic corruption that allowed companies like Insys to flourish. Instead, Yates opts for glitzy montages of excess and quick-hit humor that feel incongruous with the real-life devastation playing out in the background.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Pain Hustlers is its lack of a clear point of view. Who are we supposed to root for? Are we meant to sympathize with Liza’s plight as a single mother navigating a morally murky industry, or should we condemn her for participating in a system that profits off human suffering? The film never answers these questions, leaving viewers adrift in a sea of half-baked moral dilemmas.
In the end, Pain Hustlers falls short of its potential. It offers fleeting moments of entertainment—Blunt’s performance is compelling, and Yates directs with a slick, frenetic style—but lacks the substance and clarity needed to make a meaningful statement about the opioid crisis. There is a good movie buried somewhere in Pain Hustlers that either embraces the chaos of the pharmaceutical industry with unflinching satire or confronts its tragic consequences with moral urgency. Unfortunately, what we’re left with is a film that does neither, settling instead for a hollow imitation of better, more thoughtful works.
For a film that aims to tackle one of America’s most pressing public health issues, Pain Hustlers ultimately feels as fleeting as the headline it was ripped from. It entertains briefly but fails to leave a lasting impression.
The Sobees Movie Night Score: 1.5 out of 5
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