Pain Hustlers (2023) Dir. David Yates

Have you seen The Wolf of Wall Street? Well, you’ve mostly seen Pain Hustlers then, which tells a similar true-life rise-and-fall story in a vibrant style similar to the Scorsese classic.

Here, our underdog is not Leonardo DiCaprio but Emily Blunt whose poor life is turned around when she joins an energetic business start-up trying to sell questionable drugs to doctors. Chris Evans is her Jonah Hill-in-crime and before too long, their dodgy sales practices result in high business growth and indulgent personal wealth.

Blunt is hugely impressive, as she always is, and Evans’ sleazy office drone continues to push him away from his heroic Captain America persona and the two make a formidable and likeable duo. Andy Garcia rounds out the lead trio with a suitable villainous turn as the rich boss and the film tries to find its ways to tackle important issues but it all feels a bit surface level.

And although it’s not particularly fair to judge a film purely in comparison to another, when the similarities are so overt, it’s difficult not to. This and The Wolf of Wall Street are both based on true stories but if they took this plot and delivered it by way of a different style or genre, I could see that working. Alternatively, if they used the frantic-style of editing, modern music and quick cutaways but chose a different story angle then again, we could have had a winner.

As it is, I just couldn’t shake the fact that we’re just getting a Tesco Value version of a superior film.

7 out of the last 8 films directed by Yates were Harry Potter-related and it’s admirable he’s finally moving away from the Potter-verse. But familiarity, which is needed for franchise films, can be a double-edged sword especially when your satire is a sub-par facsimile.

In the end it’s a harmless piece of streaming fluff with actors who I enjoy but everyone has done better work elsewhere, and Pain Hustlers’ lack of originality is the bitterest pill of all to swallow.

★★½

2.5 / 5

Michael Sales

Available to stream on Netflix now