Pain Hustlers

'Pain Hustlers' is an American drama movie directed by David Yates. It is based on the book of the same name published in 2022 by Evan Hughes and depicts the US opioid epidemic from a business point of view. It stars Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.

Liza Drake (Blunt) is a single mother who works as an exotic dancer in a club while she tries to raise her teenage daughter, who also suffers from a cerebral malformation. The woman reaches rock bottom when her sister evicts her from her garage, where she was living, and ends up with his daughter in a motel.

At the same time, Liza meets on the club Peter Brenner (Evans), a pharmaceutical representative who offers her a job for a 100.000 per year salary. To do that, he forges a CV telling Liza has a biochemical degree and introduces her to his boss, Jack Neel (Andy Garcia), who quickly hires her. Her objective: convince doctors to prescribe the main drug on the company: Lonafen.

Soon Liza will learn she is in front of very lucrative business, specially when they discover that Lonafen is very effective with cancer patients. But to do that she will have to cross several times the line between legal and illegal, in a story of crime, briberies and forgeries, where health is the least important matter.