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"Pain Hustlers" (2023) directed by David Yates is another hit for Netflix in my opinion. Although it has a questionable message at times, it's important to remember that the objective of this film is to entertain it's audience and not necessarily speak golden opinions, similar to "Barbie" (2023), but unlike Barbie, it is not preachy, and therefor I was able to enjoy it even more.

Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) is a poor struggling single mother who's daughter gets kicked out of school for arson. She desperately hops from job to job trying to make ends meet. She catches a break when she meets a pharmaceutical salesman named Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) who forges her resume and gives her a shot. The company she works for, Zanna, provides cancer pain medication but is on the brink of collapse as they are unable to get doctors to provide their patients with prescriptions for this new untested drug of theirs, and Liza saves the company due to her streetwise persuasion skills and gives her family better lives . . . Or so it seemed at first.

Pain Hustlers offers a very unique and intriguing story that evolves throughout the film. It features genuinely interesting and in-depth characters of varying moralities who are all acted excellently. It offers a slice of life experience similar to that of "The Devil Wears Prada" (2006) & "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013), so if you enjoyed either of those films like I did there is a greater chance you will enjoy this one. I appreciated that the film gets more dark / morbid eventually and does not end on a cliché happy ending where nothing mattered.

So the main character Liza is not morally bankrupt by any means, she's just a less fortunate struggling mother trying to better her life, but the film's overall message is super mixed and might leave you feeling a bit awkward with how to feel. Liza and some others constantly remind us how they're beating cancer and saving the world, when in reality, they are only doing what they're doing for the pay cheques, so I wish they would stop pretending. The film also makes doctors seem like glorified drug dealers, and that was partially due to the plot decision to try and make the medication they are selling "off label" meaning you will no longer need doctor's permission to take it and you can buy it at any local grocery store's pharmacy, which could never happen in real life since it's an addictive drug designed for stage 4 cancer patients with no other resorts left (I know this is supposedly based on a true story but I highly doubt that part was entirely true, but even if it was, it made for dumb storytelling and could have been altered). The film also takes personal agency and empowerment away from Liza and some others by attuning her fortune to pure dumb luck, and womanly charm (Every doctor in this movie is a lonely divorced balding man who has to be seduced in order to get their signatures), and it also scratches the surface of trying to throw her under the bus when the film implies she's a bad person for taking a business phone call during a dance recital for her daughter, in which the daughter starts to seize up.

Pain Hustlers is just like Barbie but minus the comedy and add drama, a very entertaining and well acted generally joyful film with an extremely contradictory message. If you take it too seriously it will annoy you, if you take it less so then you will find yourself having a great time.

#rainynights #movies #painhustlers