She deals your pain.
Pain Hustlers movie storyline. Dreaming of a better life for her and her young daughter, Liza Drake, a high-school dropout, lands a job with a failing pharmaceutical start-up in a yellowing strip mall in Central Florida. Liza’s charm, guts and drive catapult the company and her into the high life, where she soon finds herself at the center of a criminal conspiracy with deadly consequences.
Pain Hustlers is a 2023 American crime drama film directed by David Yates from a screenplay by Wells Tower, based on the 2022 book of the same name by Evan Hughes. The film stars Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy García, Catherine O’Hara, Jay Duplass, Brian d’Arcy James, and Chloe Coleman. Its plot centers on a high school dropout who lands a job with a failing pharmaceutical company in Central Florida, where she soon finds herself at the center of a criminal conspiracy.
Pain Hustlers had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2023, and was released in select theaters in the United States on October 20, 2023, before its streaming debut by Netflix on October 27, 2023.
About the Story
In 2011, Liza Drake is a struggling single mother working as an exotic dancer in Florida while raising her teenage daughter Phoebe and dealing with Phoebe’s father who lives in Savannah. After meeting Pete Brenner at her club and having a friendly and casual conversation, he offers her a job paying $100,000 per year. Later, Liza is called into her daughter’s school when her daughter and her friends are suspended for starting a fire near the campus. Liza takes Phoebe and her niece home, where she’s living out of her sister’s garage. After an argument about money her sister kicks her out and Liza and Phoebe move into a motel.
After her car is repossessed, Liza decides to take Pete up on his job offer and tracks him down to his office at pharmaceutical company Zanna. She is unaware that the cash-strapped start-up is having a hard time breaking into the market and is desperately scrambling for additional investors to fund a marketing push in the run-up to its planned IPO.
Pete looks at Liza’s dismal resume and forges a more impressive curricula vitae, claiming she has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. He then takes her to meet the founder of the company, Doctor Jack Neel, who hires her immediately despite the company being on an apparent hiring freeze. Pete gives her a five-day probation to convince a major physician to prescribe their marquee drug, Lonafen.
Liza goes through the entire list of potential clients in fewer than five days and fails to secure any prescriptions. Meanwhile, Phoebe experiences a seizure and they learn she has CAVM. Thinking the job opportunity is over, she returns to the office of Dr. Lydell, her first sales attempt to collect a piece of Tupperware she left with him and overhears a cancer patient and his wife discussing the poor side effects he’s experiencing from a more commonly prescribed drug.
After making a convincing and transparent case that Lonafen would be a better option for his patient, Lydell agrees to prescribe it. Liza also invites him to help launch their speaker program wherein he can share his testimony about the drug’s efficacy as a physician. The event initially fails and Lydell nearly ends his relationship with Zanna despite his patient praising the drug, but Liza is able to salvage the situation and turn it into a proper speaker program. When Pete offers Lydell financial incentives to prescribe Lonafen, Lydell officially signs on.
Pain Hustlers (2023)
Directed by: David Yates
Starring: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, Andy García, Jay Duplass, Brian d’Arcy James, Amit Shah, Chloe Coleman, Aubrey Dollar, Michael Kosta, Nick McNeil
Screenplay by: Wells Tower
Production Design by: Molly Hughes
Cinematography by: George Richmond
Film Editing by: Mark Day
Costume Design by: Colleen Atwood
Set Decoration by: Bridget Keefe, Kim Leoleis, Shelley Zortman
Art Direction by:
Music by: James Newton Howard, Michael Dean Parsons
MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexual content, nudity and drug use.
Distributed by: Netflix
Release Date: September 11, 2023 (TIFF), October 20, 2023 (United States)
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