David Yates spent a career making Harry Potter movies. His first post-Magic World movie is almost the farthest thing from it. Pain Hustlers feels like a glorified TV movie of the week featuring A-listers doing great work and telling an important story. But the rather rote approach to telling this story makes it a bit of a slog to get through.
Yes the cast it top notch and none of them are phoning it in. But the film never gives us a reason to care about any of them. Even Blunt's rags to riches story and her sick daughter arc, her character never connects. And it's not her. Blunt does good work here along with everyone else (including a great against type performance by Catherine O'Hara) but the film just feels so by the book.
Yes we've seen these stories of how capitalism corrupts and the film tacks on an ending which implies that the perpetrators have been brought to justice and therefore this won't happen again.... okay. The approach in Pain Hustlers just feels so over simplified and never quite compelling enough to make it worth the watch.
Pain Hustlers
Starring: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, Catherine O'Hara, Brian d'Arcy James, Jay Duplass, Amit Shah, Chloe Coleman
Director: David Yates
Writer: Wells Tower
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