The movie turns the opioid disaster right into a scammer story, not a legal one.
The opioid disaster is the deadliest drug epidemic in American historical past—and, of late, irresistible supply materials for Hollywood. TV exhibits corresponding to Hulu’s Dopesick and Netflix’s Painkiller explored the rise of Purdue Pharma, the corporate behind Oxycontin, and its many victims. Crime dramas corresponding to Starz’s Hightown and HBO’s Mare of Easttown, and movies corresponding to 2021’s Cherry and 2018’s Little Woods, wove habit into their storytelling. Opioids have even performed a key position in comedies; AMC’s sitcom send-up Kevin Can F**ok Himself, as an illustration, included a plot about orchestrating an unintentional overdose.
Some tasks have taken a extra delicate method than others, however for probably the most half, they painting their material because the staggering tragedy it’s. Ache Hustlers, a brand new addition to the style that begins streaming Friday on Netflix, takes a unique tack. Directed by David Yates, who’s finest identified for shepherding the again half of the Harry Potter films and all three Improbable Beasts entries, the movie blithely makes use of the epidemic to decorate up an otherwise-familiar rags-to-riches story. The result’s a tasteless endeavor that transforms the prescription-drug disaster right into a flashy cartoon—a purported dissection of a damaged system that takes too lighthearted a tone.
Based mostly on Evan Hughes’s e book of the identical title (which constructed on his New York Occasions reporting), Ache Hustlers liberally fictionalizes the story of Insys Therapeutics, an organization that used shady techniques to flood the market with its fentanyl product. The film renames or invents most of its characters, together with the protagonist, Liza (performed by Emily Blunt), a single mother and former stripper who begins working for a failing pharmaceutical start-up. She turns the corporate’s prospects round by constructing on a racketeering scheme that includes “speaker applications,” that are—truly, you don’t actually need the small print, do you?
In any case, Ache Hustlers barely cares about how Zanna—the movie’s model of Insys—might so simply exploit the American health-care system. It’s rather more preoccupied with deploying methods from the playbooks of The Large Quick and The Wolf of Wall Road to emphasise the corporate’s extra: We get copious slow-motion close-ups of the Zanna group’s over-the-top events, frenzied montages of engaging gross sales reps luring docs into prescribing their drug, and a barrage of cheeky, fourth-wall-breaking voice-overs from Liza. These sequences are supposed to underline the dizzying and disgusting nature of Zanna’s rise, however the impact is overwhelming. The movie comes off as a substitute like a goofy celebration of greed.
Worse, the movie struggles to make its characters greater than caricatures. Other than Liza, who turns into increasingly more troubled by how simply she will justify the corporate’s wrongdoings for her personal monetary acquire, Ache Hustlers appears tired of inspecting how Zanna staff could have wrestled with their product turning sufferers into addicts. There’s Pete (Chris Evans), a salesman whose whole goal is being as profane as potential. There’s Dr. Lydell (Brian d’Arcy James), a doctor identified to simply accept bribes and overprescribe, and whose baldness turns right into a tiresome operating gag. And there’s Dr. Jack Neel (Andy Garcia), Zanna’s CEO, a rich eccentric and one-note villain.
By the point Ache Hustlers exhibits a single sufferer of the corporate’s success, it’s too late. When Liza learns of a buddy’s overdose, the demise seems like an afterthought. Not solely did the character in query hardly ever seem, however a number of extraneous subplots took up many of the display screen time. Considered one of them, which follows Liza’s mom, Jackie (Catherine O’Hara, under- and misused), makes an attempt for instance Zanna’s poisonous office tradition however goes nowhere. One other, about Liza’s daughter’s non-painkiller-related well being struggles, does little greater than assist preserve the viewers’s sympathy for Liza. The movie even inserts black-and-white “interviews” with the characters as a option to remind the viewers of the real-life stakes of habit. However these techniques fail to deepen the narrative; they’re distractions, efforts to inject vitality right into a story that was by no means meant to be a snarky comedy.
In that sense, maybe Ache Hustlers isn’t an opioid-crisis venture in any respect, however a scammer story. Latest movies and exhibits in that realm have centered closely on the misdeeds of start-up tradition and social-media savvy swindlers, however one of the best ones, regardless of the topic, perceive that the grift is simply half of the story. A con’s affect issues simply as a lot because the con itself—who it affected and why it labored can illuminate what impulses and societal ills maintain such schemes. Ache Hustlers overlooks that truth. Ultimately, the film acts very similar to its characters: It diverts the viewer’s consideration with gaudy visuals and melodramatic plot factors as a substitute of ever coming near telling a single uncomfortable reality.
