Pain Hustlers

Liza Drake, a single mother in Florida with no job and no home, talks her way into a small pharmaceutical company with a fake résumé. She rises fast in sales. Then she works out what she has been selling: a fentanyl product licensed for cancer patients, marketed to people who are not terminal, leaving them addicted and dead. David Yates directed, from a screenplay by Wells Tower based on Evan Hughes's 2022 book. Hughes first reported the subject in The New York Times Magazine in 2018. The story draws on the real activities of Insys Therapeutics. Emily Blunt and Chris Evans lead, with Andy García, Catherine O'Hara, Jay Duplass and Brian d'Arcy James in support. Netflix bought the film for at least 50 million dollars in May 2022. Shooting began that August. It premiered at Toronto on 11 September 2023 and landed on Netflix on 27 October. The reviews were mostly negative. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 23 percent and Metacritic at 44. Who it is for: viewers curious about pharmaceutical scandals and anyone who wants to watch Blunt work. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the subject to be treated with weight. The film narrates the opioid crisis in a jokey Big Short register, and most critics wrote that the tone does not fit the material.