Zanna Therapeutics’ top executives swore they had nothing to do with America’s opioid crisis. They insisted they were just providing relief to people in pain—to people who really needed it.
Liza Drake knows better. She should. After all, it was her idea to bribe doctors into prescribing Zanna’s product, Lonafen.
Liza thought she was doing the right thing. After all, Lonafen’s clinical studies had shown it was less addictive, more effective and nine times faster than the leading competitor. Plus, it had an overdose rate of less than 1%, something no other fentanyl-based prescription drug could claim.
Why shouldn’t cancer patients (Lonafen’s only approved market) get the pain relief they’re so desperately seeking?
Well, if Liza had been honest with herself, she probably would have said it was because the folks peddling Lonafen weren’t licensed pharmaceutical professionals. They were desperate people she hired off the street because she knew they had no scruples about bending the truth to get the sale. Then there was the little problem that those reps and Zanna’s executives were leaving out critical information from Lonafen’s clinical studies.
And let’s face it: Lonafen was fentanyl, one of the world’s most addictive (and deadly) drugs.
Unfortunately, none of that mattered to Liza—or to anyone else involved in Zanna’s scam. All Liza and her cohorts cared about was the money.
Liza needed the money. She’d lost everything in a nasty divorce. She was living in a seedy roadside motel after getting kick out of her sister’s house. Her daughter, Phoebe, was on the verge of expulsion. Liza was working as a stripper. And most importantly, Phoebe needed an important, life-saving surgery.
If money is the root of all evil, then Liza and her colleagues were handing out fentanyl-laced apples by the basketful.
Pain Hustlers is a cautionary tale about greed. Liza Drake reaps the consequences of her own greed the hard way. She gets the money needed to save her own daughter’s life, but at the cost of other people’s loved ones, including a few she has a personal connection to. (We hear about other desperate parents who also sold Lonafen to give their children a better life.)
Throughout the film, Liza struggles with the guilt she feels about using underhanded and outright illegal methods to get rich. She justifies it, telling herself that people need Lonafen. She tries to convince herself she’s not responsible since she warns her bosses about the immorality of it all. But in the end, she realizes that she needs to come clean—especially to herself.
A young girl gives a quilt to Liza and Phoebe because she believes they need it more than her. We hear that Zanna was created by one of the company’s founders, Dr. Neel, after his wife died of cancer; he didn’t want anyone else to go through the pain or fear of pain that she did.
[Spoiler Warning] Liza turns Zanna in to the Feds, giving them all the proof they need to convict the company’s top executives. She goes to prison herself and loses all the money she had worked so hard for. But once her time is served (a punishment she willingly accepts for her actions), she embraces a more holistic lifestyle, trying to be a better person than she was before.
When a Zanna exec is held responsible for the deaths of patients, he defends himself, telling his accusers to “throw the first stone,” a reference to John 8:7. He also states that each person involved in the opioid crisis will have to work things out for themselves with God.
Someone says it doesn’t matter if a drug is “liquid Jesus” since doctors won’t prescribe it. A guy says “thoughts and prayers” when Liza tells him Phoebe is sick.
Before Liza works for Zanna, she’s employed at a strip club. Several scenes take place at this establishment, where there’s quite a bit of upper female nudity. We never see Liza remove her clothes, but she does walk around in lingerie. And many of her coworkers perform half-clothed on stage. (We also see women half-dressed backstage and a man’s bare rear as he swims in the buff.)
Some of the folks hired to be pharmaceutical reps have sex with their clients. We don’t see anything explicit, but it’s very clear one man is performing a sexual act on another man in a car. Later, we see a man and woman together preparing to hook up. Elsewhere, Phoebe reads from a forum about this to tease her mom, who covers Phoebe’s eyes and tells her it’s inappropriate.
Liza’s own mom, Jackie, has sex with Dr. Neel. This takes place offscreen, but we spot Neel sneaking out the next morning in his boxers and Jackie in a nightie. We hear that Jackie has an extensive sexual history (she’s been married at least four times). And she graphically describes an infection she received from sex.
Pete, one of Zanna’s executives, is a bit of a creep. He first meets Liza at the strip club where she works. He comes on to her several times throughout the film (which she declines). And he hires a woman because of her looks (she’s a former beauty queen) and eventually gets her pregnant. It’s unclear if they wed, but they do begin living together after this, expressing their commitment to raising their child together.
At parties, people dance provocatively, women swim (and wrestle) in bikinis, and the atmosphere suggests that everyone is going to have sex with someone before the night is over. Some women wear revealing outfits. A painting in the background of one scene has naked people in it.
We hear a few crude terms for male and female anatomy. There’s crass talk about the way women look. Characters talk about who they’re having sex with. We hear about a few divorces (and one man describes how he discovered his wife was cheating on him). A woman says she sold sex toys.
This film deals heavily with the victims of opioid overdoses, and we hear about the deaths of many people. Because this movie is based on a true story, news flashes show real life victims in body bags and ambulances.
Many of the people using fentanyl for pain relief are also victims of cancer, and we see some of the uglier sides of that disease.
One man describes his time as a soldier (we see some of the violence he witnessed in Iraq) and how it never scared him. But the pain that cancer brought terrifies him, so he remains high on fentanyl constantly, even when it give him sores on his mouth. Later, when he’s high on Lonafen, he spits out two teeth, not even realizing what he’s done because of his intoxication on the drug.
Pete graphically recounts being raped by his foster dad when he was 13 years old. He notes that he managed to knock a few of the guy’s teeth out in the process. (He tells the story as though it was a joke, showing how twisted he’s become.)
Phoebe has several seizures, falling to the floor each time. She’s ultimately OK, but it’s still quite frightening to those around her. We later see her post-surgery with several staples in her head.
A man repeatedly says he wishes Liza would die. A woman graphically describes the physical aftereffects of childbirth. Someone punches a doctor, bloodying his nose. Another doctor ignores a patient with a bleeding orifice so he can play guitar. Pete manhandles Liza and another person to search them for recording devices. We hear police break down someone’s door.
There are more than 80 uses of the f-word and nearly 40 of the s-word. God’s name is abused 30 times, a third of which are paired with “d–n,” and Christ’s name is abused four times. We also hear several uses of “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–ch,” “d–k” and “h—.” And someone displays both middle fingers.
Obviously, this film focuses on drug addiction, specifically fentanyl (which is a synthetic opioid). Many abuse the drug out of fear about the pain they’ll experience otherwise, and we see them completely zonked out. Several addicted folks swarm Liza at a doctor’s office, believing she carries the drug on her person. And, as stated previously, many die after overdosing.
Several scenes take place in bars. People smoke, vape and drink throughout. Many get drunk. Pete snorts cocaine. Someone smokes an unknown substance from a bong. We hear Liza was once arrested for illegally selling marijuana.
Liza has scammed folks her whole life. When Phoebe sets a fire that accidentally gets out of control at school, Liza manipulates the administrators into suspending Phoebe instead of expelling her. She bets against Pete and wins (and according to him, she would do this to many people, getting thousands of dollars sometimes). And her resume lists almost nothing but pyramid schemes.
We learn about “speaker programs,” which is a legal way for pharmaceutical companies to schmooze (read: bribe) doctors into prescribing their products instead of the competition’s. And we learn that when companies break the rules of speaker programs, they’re usually just slapped with hefty fines and temporarily banned from hosting them. (Which happens to more than one company after they pay doctors to prescribe fentanyl for ailments it’s not medically approved for.)
To Liza’s credit, after Zanna becomes successful, she tries to convince Pete and Dr. Neel to make their own speaker program compliant with federal regulations. She also tries to convince the doctors she works with that it’s a bad idea to continue breaking the law. However, they’re all too excited by the amount of money they’re making, and they manipulate Liza into breaking even more rules, since “pain is pain.”
Several people lie on their resumes, and Pete even fudges a few resumes himself. Pete calls them all “PhDs,” which he says means “poor, hungry and dumb.” Pete also shows preferential treatment to the woman he is having sex with, giving her bonuses at work.
As Zanna becomes more and more successful, Dr. Neel becomes more and more paranoid. He goes to extreme lengths to ensure that he won’t be arrested if Zanna’s illegal activities come to light. And he bribes several people into lying for him so that he won’t go to prison.
A man repeatedly tries to take credit for Pete and Liza’s work at Zanna. Jackie similarly states that Liza’s success is a result of her own success as a parent (which Liza scoffs at since Jackie had a habit of leaving Liza with her grandparents).
There are a few distant and absent fathers. Some mothers are accused of abandoning their children and being bad parents.
Folks living at a motel are inconsiderate of their neighbors, being loud all night long. A prestigious school admits new students on the basis of money rather than academic prowess.
We witness a man defecating in a kitchen sink. Phoebe retches into a toilet, unable to keep her medication down.
Pain Hustlers reminds me of a slightly less sexual version of Wolf of Wall Street. The theme of the film is greed: what people are willing to do, or who they’re willing to hurt, for money.
In a nutshell here, there’s quite a bit of nudity, tons of foul language, heaps of corruption, and drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.
Pain Hustlers is based on the story of John Kapoor and Insys Therapeutics. Kapoor was the first top pharmaceutical executive arrested for his part in America’s opioid epidemic.
In this film, Liza, Pete and Dr. Neel (who represents Kapoor) lie to patients and manipulate doctors into prescribing Lonafen, a fentanyl-based drug approved for opioid-tolerant cancer patients.
At first, Liza convinces herself that they’re doing a good thing, bringing relief to people in need. But then Zanna starts marketing the drug for non-cancer patients (which it hasn’t been approved for). And pretty soon, reports start trickling in that Lonafen patients are becoming addicted and even overdosing.
Liza starts to question whether Lonafen is a miracle drug or just a dangerous one. But she’s too desperate to put a stop to it. She needs the money to pay for a life-saving medical procedure for her own daughter. And Pete and Dr. Neel are too blinded by their greed to care what’s happening.
In the end, the people responsible face justice. But even those consequences can’t undo the damage they caused. Families are torn asunder. Lives are lost.
And while Pain Hustlers might serve as a cautionary tale against greed and prescription drug addiction, it’s not one that most families need to see in order to understand this issue.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
