This movie is messy, not in a terrible way but it just doesn’t work in many aspects. It’s just shocking to me that the cast does such a great job and the premise is really good but the execution just lacks chemistry and taste. Pain Hustlers execution is really bad and you can tell by the way you can simply guess everything that’s going to happen, not only that, Chris Evans and Emily Blunt are great actors but they just did not work together. Some people are just meant to work separate as it seems here.
In Pain Hustlers, 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.
Gotta tell you how Emily Blunt carried this movie but still wasn’t enough to carry what this actually was. Despite being poorly executed, I must confess that the movie is indeed watchable and enjoyable and I feel like many people will like it after their first watch, but after you’re done with the movie, the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
Chris Evans delivers here a character with such a flat development and I’d say that is not fully the script’s fault but also the performance, I felt like Evans has been delivering some pretty mid performances lately and I really hope he goes back on track because I’m truly a huge fan of his work and not only talking about Marvel Studios.
The editing of this movie feels extremely generic, feels like they didn’t even try to innovate, which of course is not something you’ll really need but considering that this movie could be an award-runner we were definitely expecting more than this.
Even though I’m here saying all the bad stuff this movie provides, there’s also some really good stuff. The score is exceptional, Emily Blunt, as I mentioned, is a queen, she stars as a character that starts off like a simple person to a rich, empowered, selfish person and her performance will have an impact on you.
As I said, the movie is a watchable, enjoyable movie. It has many issues but the cheesy vibe this movie has can be a delight in some parts. The script suffers a lot and was definitely what affected the movie the most.
Overall, Pain Hustlers ends up as a big waste. A movie with a promising premise and cast that could have been something way bigger than it actually was. It’s a poor-executed film with its predictable, dull, and unfunny plot.
★★½
Pain Hustlers releases on Netflix on October 27
