Marchands de douleur

Carried by a typically strong Blunt performance, Pain Hustlers is both watchable and eye-opening, even though its dramatic impulses do kind of cancel each other out.

Directed by David Yates, who has spent most of the last two decades helming "Harry Potter" movies and prequels and might not be the best fit for this material, Pain Hustlers aims to be a fast-paced, raucous, blunt and slick work a la "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Big Short," but winds up caught between the worlds of breezy satire and hard truth. Emily Blunt and Chris Evans are fabulous but you'll be hard-pressed to remember anything else by the time the credits are done rolling.

But the movie does succeed in unpacking the raw grift and exploitation of the pharma sales business, and the wider dysfunction of the American health care and legal systems that allows it to go unchecked. So a thumbs up on that part.

My Rating: 6.5/10.

I found the movie to be very watchable & more realistic than given credit for in other reviews. It's easy to dislike a character whose behavior is unprincipled & likely to harm others, as in the case of all the main players in this film. But in doing so, you ignore the fact that people are complex, usually not all good or all bad. Circumstances can dictate behavior & should be taken into account. Liza Drake wasn't a bad person. She was a smart, desperate person looking for a way out of her dead end job & seized an opportunity that looked promising initially. Pete was more comfortable behaving unscrupulously. I think both Emily Blunt & Chris Evans brought their characters to life in a realistic way. I also feel like Liza Drake was a good mother. The reviewer who was offended by Liza's response to her daughter's fire starting was a minor incident in the story. I found the movie to be quite interesting, as well as a decent portrayal of the pharmaceutical industry. You can't ignore the headlines of the last several years.

Give me Emily Blunt and Chris Evans plus an interesting story, I'd probably watch it!

Is this film going to change cinema forever? No.

Is it a solid film, with good comedy, multi layered story, interesting characters? Yes 100%

Don't go into this film thinking its going to be a serious drama about pharmaceutical companies and the opioid crisis. You can easily tell that by the trailer. This is much more in the vein of a "Wolf of Wall Street" type of film, although not to the same level of quality of that film.

Emily Blunt is fantastic! I mean when is she not fantastic, its so easy to under appreciate great actors not doing a "cashing in a pay check" kind of performance. Which this so easily could have been. Blunt, in a strange way, gave the film a bit of heart and something to balance against the wild drug company side of the story. Even though her character is still not a great person overall, you can still feel empathy when needed.

Chris Evans is also great and yet again getting to do stuff without wearing a costume! He is a great actor but doesn't always get to show that, I hope this gets him more work with more quality directors in the future.

Overall I enjoyed the film, I knew what I was getting myself into and it didn't disappoint in the slightest. Funny, interesting, sad and has a decent ending. Its definitely a film best suited to a streaming service, you aren't missing out on the cinema experience for this. 70% out of 100!

Performances of the main leads (Emily Blunt and Chris Evans) were good , their chemistry was okay. Story line was also okay. Though I do get why some people would give this movie a bad ratings. However in my own opinion, I found the movie to be interesting since it was base on real life story and a good reflection on people's never-ending desires for success.

If you ask me if it's worthy to watch or not, I'd say it is. We all have various standards about what a good movie should be like, therefore I'd suggest "give it a try". If you've read terrible reviews don't mind it ,that doesn't accurately reflect the entire movie.

Pain Hustlers is an opioid rendition of the Wolf of Wall Street by the way of The Big Short which means it's a really entertaining true story with a clear purpose but it's also really hard to deny that it took the safest and most boring approach to telling such an important story, drowning out the more serious aspects in favour of something more generic.

Emily Blunt is great, the film wants you to genuinely care about her despite the flaws and it's her skill that actually makes that happen. Chris Evans continues to get as far away from Captain America as humanly possible with another undemanding yet enjoyable irredeemable asshole.

It's so nice to see director David Yates finally break free of the Harry Potter franchise with something so different, even if the newfound style here is derivative and remains fairly desaturated. The needle drops are used the right amount, they work well even if some of them are incredibly obvious song choices.