Movie: Pain Hustlers
Production Companies: Wychwood Media, Grey Matters Production Ltd
Director: David Yates
Producers: Lawrence Grey
Scriptwriters: Wells Tower
Main Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans
Release Date: 28th October 2023
Running Time: 122 minutes
Certificate: 15
Introduction: Emily Blunt and Chris Evans deliver great performances in an otherwise jumbled story of two scheming pharmaceutical employers in this Netflix drama.
Synopsis: Based on a true story, a woman (Emily Blunt) who is struggling to raise her daughter takes a risky job at a pharmaceutical company where they utilize a dangerous marketing strategy to sell their drug.
Analysis: Despite having such talents at it’s centre, ‘Pain Hustlers’ ends up feeling like a rather confused and muddled story that does not know what is wants to be. It is a fast paced story that sets off to the races almost as soon as it starts. Admittedly, I was caught off – guard by the whole mood and tone of the film, turning out be dirtier, more foul mouthed and more R rated in general than the trailer had implied. I had no issue with this though. On contemplation, the film turns out to be an amalgamation of Jennifer Lopez’s brilliant ‘Hustlers’ , Adam McKay’s ‘The Big Short’ and Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ but unfortunately not as sharp or as promising as that sounds. The film in general just has this befuddled feeling about it.
This is worsened by the fact that our central characters are really hard to like despite good performances. They are scummy individuals that the film expects you to root for, but quite the opposite ends up happening. In fact I found the general nature of the film difficult to get on board with, I get what is happening and why but it just didn’t work for me. This was directed by David Yates – who helmed most of the ‘Harry Potter’ films and whom I was surprised to see direct this – I was quite surprised to see him being able to pull something like this off (not a family film in the slightest unlike most of his work) having come off the bat of both that franchise and also the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ films. A bizarre directorial choice, granted, but he still does an adequate job even though the writing is not all there. Aside from fantastic performances by Blunt and Evans, there’s not much to this.
Overall Rating: 5/10 – Average
Target Audience: 15+
Content Warning: strong language, drug misuse, sex, nudity, sexual violence references
Recommendation: No
