On October 27, Netflix released the crime drama Pain Hustlers. The plot of the film is based on the novel of the same name by Evan Hughes, published in 2022, and his article for the New York Times in 2018. In the review below, we share our impressions of the novelty and explain why there is a place for obsessive deja vu among them.
Liza Drake, a pretty single mother from Florida, lives on a shabby couch in her sister’s garage, dances in a strip club for a living, and dreams of one day escaping this miserable situation. The woman is raising her teenage daughter Phoebe, who is prone to epileptic seizures, on her own, and realizes that her child needs much better living conditions, not to mention the cost of the necessary treatment.
One day, in the middle of her regular shift, she meets Peter Brenner, an agent for a small pharmaceutical company, and he leaves her half-dressed business card with a job offer. Having no other choice and not even a decent resume, Liza decides to take the job, and this decision will turn her life upside down.
The world premiere of Pain Hustlers took place back in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film has already received some feedback from reviewers of various media, and to say that it is disappointing is an understatement. After watching the film, it becomes clear why Western reviewers did not skimp on angry epithets, and the legendary phrase of the second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma “We’ve been there before!” comes to mind.
Not long ago, the authors of the TV series “Painkiller” spoke quite exhaustively about the opioid epidemic in the United States and the influence of pharmaceutical companies on its catastrophic development. Who, by the way, were also far from being the first to address this painful aspect of American society. A little later, it was also mentioned in The Fall of the House of Usher.
The most surprising thing is how much Purdue Pharma and Pain Hustlers have in common. Surprising similarities are evident almost everywhere – from the titles of the projects to entire scenes, characters, and, accordingly, the context. Whether it’s the storyline of a “naive girl” trying to sell her drug to doctors or the scene of a feast during the plague, both Netflix products have a surprisingly large number of common ground.
The problem with the idea is that the narrative sins with inappropriate intonational swings. At first, the story of ephemeral success looks like something lightly satirical in the spirit of The Big Short, albeit not as sophisticated as Adam McKay’s film. Suddenly, in the final act, there is a sharp change of mood with a bias towards pure drama, but the latter, because of its brevity and superficiality, simply does not have time to evoke real emotion.
Thus, due to Netflix’s strong desire to cover the opioid crisis as fully as possible, particularly in the United States, the corporate bosses of the streaming service did not even notice how they had led to an overdose of monotonous content.
“Pain Hustlers” is a story with a secondary and predictable plot and quite appealing characters. Sometimes this is enough to enjoy a movie, and to some extent this is the case. But the film looks more confident while it pretends to be a satire, and the transition to the territory of drama definitely does not do it any good.
