Lively and a bit messy, Pain Hustlers is still a movie that deserves your attention. And I’m not saying that just because it stars Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. It’s based on the true story of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold insane amounts of Fentanyl during the first wave of the opioid epidemic. Just to be perfectly clear, this was a completely legal thing to do just ten years ago. What wasn’t legal was to pay doctors to peddle your drugs to anyone who walks through their doors. The drug Insys created is Subsys (Lonafen in the movie), a liquid form of Fentanyl that provides much-needed pain relief to patients suffering from terminal cancer. I completely approve of this move.
If you’re going to die in a couple of months and you’re in an insane amount of pain, both physical and mental, you should get fucked up on anything you want. In fact, any terminal diagnosis should come with this. And if you’re wondering what’s going on with this Fentanyl-based drug, Subsys, it’s still available on the market. BTcP Pharma is the manufacturer making it available only for terminally ill patients. Despite all of these quite depressing themes, Pain Hustlers is an upbeat movie with a lot of humor. It’s trying to copy the formula perfected in movies like The Big Short and The Wolf of Wall Street.
However, it also remains quite personal as we’re focused on the journey of a single mother struggling to find work. And on top of that, her daughter is having major health issues. She’ll soon find herself working as a sales rep for Insys, trying to get doctors to prescribe their drugs. This element of the story was completely fascinating to me. The level of commercialization in the healthcare system is insane. And I think we’ve all dealt with it. I know I have when my doctor tried to get me to buy not just supplements but also homeopathic concoctions. I actually asked my next doctor was that okay and he just nervously changed the topic.
Luckily, he never tried to get me to buy that shit that both of us knew he was getting a commission for. Pain Hustlers illuminates dubious moral practices almost every fifteen minutes. And they, in turn, illuminate the current state of our society. A society that’s willing to put profit and personal gain above everything else. On the other side of that equation, we have not just regulatory but also the criminal justice system. Both of which have time and time again failed this country. I think that everyone knows what’s up and that money is king. This means that the big pharma can do anything it wants, without any consequences.
And again I’m going down another rabbit hole, so I’ll try to keep the rest of this movie recommendation short and sweet. Carried by great performances by not just Blunt and Evans but also Catherine O’Hara and Andy Garcia, Pain Hustlers is not a perfect movie. It feels a bit flat and disjointed at times. And the almost two-hour running time doesn’t help with that. This is David Yates’ first movie after the Fantastic Beasts trilogy. And you can see he’s struggling to generate the appropriate tone and atmosphere. And yet some portions of the movie are excellent while these flaws are covered up nicely by the charismatic cast.
I think it’s best to approach it as a parody and focus on the moral issues along with the terrifying fact that it’s based on true events. If you want to know more about this particular case of Insys Therapeutics (Zanna in the movie), you can read Evan Hughes’ non-fiction book The Hard Sell. I also must recommend you a 2021 HBO documentary The Crime of the Century exploring the opioid epidemic from all possible angles. Finally, Pain Hustlers features one of the better acronyms I’ve seen in recent years. While Glengarry Glen Ross had ABC – Always Be Closing, this one requires a PHD from their sales reps. And PHD means Poor Hungry and Desperate.
Director: David Yates
Writers: Wells Tower, Evan Hughes
Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, Chloe Coleman, Andy Garcia, Brian d’Arcy James
Fun Facts: Emily Blunt’s character Liza Drake in the movie Pain Hustlers is made up. The closest match is Maria Guzman who actually worked for Insys but her backstory is very much different than Liza Drake’s. However, it does end in the same way.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15257160/
