Pain Hustlers: Spitballing and shimmying through the US opioid crisis

With its wisecracking narration, Icarus-singed trajectory and swaggering amorality, this dramatisation of a pharmaceutical scandal from David Yates, the Fantastic Beasts director, is in thrall to The Wolf of Wall Street. Adapted from a 2018 New York Times Magazine article by Evan Hughes and his subsequent nonfiction book The Hard Sell, Pain Hustlers spitballs and shimmies its way through the United States’ opioid crisis.

Truncations and amalgamations aside, this is a lightly fictionalised account of the Insys scandal of 2012, during which a small pharmaceutical player launched a fentanyl-based pain spray with predictably ruinous consequences. The rags-to-riches section rattles along, as Eliza Drake (Emily Blunt), a single-parent stripper living with her mom (Catherine O’Hara), meets a two-bit sales rep named Pete Brenner (Chris Evans).

A practised grifter with a fake CV, Liza sweet-talks her way around Pete’s managers and doctor clients. A “speaker programme” allows for schmoozing and low-level bribery. Slick pitches to practitioners to prescribe the drug off label translate into widespread corruption and soaring stock prices. All the while, the increasingly unhinged billionaire backer of the enterprise (a terrific Andy Garcia) is pushing for more, more, more.

Wells Tower’s screenplay creates a compelling, compromised hero in Eliza, one matched by Blunt’s charm and commitment. But the film is ultimately torn between raucous satire and social conscience. Faux-documentary inserts hinder rather than help the story. A subplot concerning Eliza’s daughter fizzles out. It’s mostly fun. If only there had been more screen time and development for Evans’s sleazy swindler and just a little more hustle.