As much as reputations and past glories mean nothing when a cast and crew assembles to shoot their latest project, the track record of success and acclaim enjoyed by the key players in Netflix’s new movie Pain Hustlers should have at the very least guaranteed something half decent.
Making his first foray into feature-length drama in over 25 years, David Yates – the sixth highest-grossing director in the history of cinema thanks to a filmography that’s racked up north of $6.3 billion at the box office – oversees former Marvel Cinematic Universe stalwart Chris Evans and the immensely talented Emily Blunt in a pharmaceutical drama designed to generate satirical incisiveness and jet-black laughs.
Based on its Rotten Tomatoes approval rating of just 22 percent, though, it would be an understatement to say that Pain Hustlers has failed in its remit. Everybody’s used to Netflix’s A-list originals falling well short among critics and audiences, but that score is still low enough to make it one of the streaming service’s worst-reviewed exclusives of the year across both film and television.
It couldn’t even debut at the top of the worldwide charts, either, but the company has at least attempted to salvage a positive by praising Evans for his against-type performance as a sharp-suited snake oil salesman.
Ironically, the longtime Captain America hasn’t exactly been winning uniformly excellent notices for his work despite his best efforts to upend his wholesome persona, but he at least deserves credit for trying. Unfortunately, he’s ended up attempting to branch out in yet another undercooked Netflix original.
