Netflix Movie Review: Pain Hustlers

With outstanding series like Dopesick (Hulu) and Painkiller(Netflix) currently streaming, it is no surprise that the new movie "Pain Hustlers" the true story about the salespeople of Insys Pharmaceutical who lied, bribed doctors, and sold dangerous pain-killing drugs that killed so many people has been released on Netflix.

Pain Hustlers stars Emily Blunt as Liza Drake a down-and-out single mother with a daughter, living in the garage of her sister with her mother. Liza seems to have no chance to lift her life out of the hole it’s in until she interviews with a failing Pharmaceutical company named InSys. Even though Liza is completely unqualified and has no college degree, she is hired by her interviewer Pete Brenner, played by Chris Evans himself, adding made-up qualifications to Liza’s resume. At the beginning of this true story, nobody can blame Liza from trying to escape from her poor squalor nowhere life into trying to sell doctors a highly effective pain killing cancer drug and making commissions that eventually became 600 thousand for one year.

The problem with situations like this is greed. Within this true story, it was also the insanity and greed of the CEO of the company Dr. Neel, played by Andy Garcia. As soon as sales flattened for the pain-killing drug that was only created for cancer patients, Neel demanded that they "go off the label" and bribe doctors to prescribe the drug for all pain. Soon after this, some people started to die of overdoses. What is most amazing about this true story is the blatant disregard to the rules set by the FDA, with the desire for so much money that all involved ignored the possibility of going to jail for many years because what they were doing for so long was against the law.

The other player in this opioid pain killing disaster is the company Purdue Pharmaceutical, the subject of the great Hulu series Dopesick (reviewed in this blog). Due to the greed of this now-bankrupt company, tens of thousands of Americans died from drug overdoses caused by Purdue’s main painkilling drug OxyContin. Purdue is now bankrupt as of 2022 as is Insys in 2019 and this also included jail time for the CEO and all the executives of this company.

For reasons unknown, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are rating this very good Netflix movie only 22%. This is dead wrong, with my rating of 80% for a solid look at the reality of what people will do for money.