"An American excess story." This is
Pain Hustlers. This crime drama film directed by David Yates, written by Wells Tower, and based on the 2022 book
The Hard Sell by Evan Hughes. Dreaming of a better life for her and her young daughter, Liza lands a job from Pete at a failing pharma start-up, where Liza’s charm, drive, and guts catapult her into the high life and the company into the center of a criminal conspiracy with dire consequences.
In August 2021, Sony Pictures announced the development of an adaptation of Hughes’ New York Times Magazine article,
The Pain Hustlers from May 2, 2018 and his subsequent book released in January 2022, to be directed by Yates and penned by Tower. In May 2022, Netflix acquired the film, which was titled
Pain Hustlers, in a deal worth at least $50 million. By late August, Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O'Hara, Andy García, Jay Duplass, Brian d'Arcy James, and Chloe Coleman were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in late October. Filming took place in Central Florida, as well as Atlanta, and Savannah, Georgia, USA.
The film stars Blunt, Evans, O'Hara, García, Duplass, James, and Coleman. Blunt lives it up like the queen of lies and swaggers into a staggering performance. Blunt and Evans make an oddly perfect on-screen duo, as their dryly humorous performances throw contrast to the film's real comedic bread and butter, all of the eccentricities flying around them. Evans is a marvellous fit for the role, and his slimy charisma could charm even the steeliest of souls. It made me not love but utterly loathe Liza - a moral victory, perhaps, but also something of a problem, because a character who is simply detestable rapidly becomes uninteresting.
The film depicts an intriguing and marvelously loathsome human beast in its natural setting, where the verdict on its judgment lies in the hands of its audience. The film doesn't want to be lovable. It just wants to remind you how excessive greed can get and catch you being entertained by it. You can't target excessiveness to hate without being excessive in its depiction. The weakest of the director of the final four
Harry Potter films. There's little here that expands on corporate raider Gordon Gekko's mantra that
"Greed ... is good." This is a fantastic exploration of greed, money, and a truly flawed character that spent much of the 2010s on a jaw-dropping but pernicious thrill-ride. Movies shouldn't provide moral instruction but the best incorporate competing philosophies. Unfortunately, there is no one Yates can bring himself to be quite as interested in as Liza. For me the film is somehow less than the sum of its parts, with no palpable sense that these men are doing anything more contemptible than living life to the full. The result is the indulgent treatment of an overindulgent character that feels more Penthouse Forum fantasy than morality tale. Perhaps that's precisely the point.
Simon says Pain Hustlers receives:
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment