Pain Hustlers

Pain Hustlers

Sidey: this is Pain Hustlers, it's Chris's nomination, and he couldn't be bothered to be here.

Reegs: Was this

Sidey: It was, it was yeah, I say he couldn't be bothered, there could be some sort of hideous drama going on, we just don't know, but Chris is not here to talk about it, so we don't know how he feels about the film.

Reegs: He's sent a cryptic, I'm unavailable.

Yeah. Yeah.

maybe

he's addicted to opioids.

Sidey: Yeah, like everyone else,

Reegs: In America seemed to be certainly for a good period of time really because the movie that we're looking at tonight pain hustlers. I had seen a sort of version of this story

Sidey: Oh, I remember you talking about it, yeah, yeah,

Reegs: Painkiller was the Netflix documentary about the Purdue Pharma scandal, basically, which took place in the 1990s.

They were the manufacturers, the Sackler family, the manufacturers of OxyContin, and the epidemic as they marketed. This stuff to vulnerable patients and, and it made loads of heroin addicts, and then basically it just happened all again, like, ten or fifteen years later,

Pete: With fentanyl.

Reegs: with, with Fentanyl, and this company Insys,

Sidey: Yeah, that's not what they're called in this, but that is the, the, so it's, it starts off with the inspired by true events when it says inspired by, I always think so. Not true, but this does seem to be obviously some of the characters

Reegs: The names and things are swapped about, and it's played up

Sidey: like Andy Garcia's character.

Probably not. There's a bit of artistic license there, but anyway the story in essence is true.

Reegs: Yeah, and it starts with Emily Blunt via voiceover as she's driving, and then interspersed with the various characters of the movie in a kind of black and white faux documentary type style, as they all explain their various

Sidey: that Chris Evans will, will just play anyone to be not like Captain America anymore.

Reegs: The sleazier the pos better the yeah, the sleazier the better.

And

she's trying to say, oh, I did it for the right reasons, and even you know, everybody's explaining away their role in this already, oh, if this is 2011, it wasn't the opioid crisis, et cetera, et cetera, but it was.

Pete: But it doesn't really, obviously because it's the very beginning of the film, it doesn't really explain what it is specifically that they're talking about. It's just

Sidey: people's, well, she's interviewed. Yeah, she's driving on the freeway or over a bridge or whatever and, but Chris Evans character, who is called Pete, Pete Brenner, he says, I, there were times when I wish he would die.

But don't get me wrong, there are other times where I wish she'd die in a more painful and slow

Pete: we know,

Sidey: we know that they've fallen out, you know, there's definitely something that has happened and she's basically the whistleblower in this story.

Reegs: Yeah. But actually what we're gonna see really is them meeting for the first time,

Sidey: We're going to see the, the growth of the company. And,

Reegs: oh, well overall this is a wild, like, rags to riches story.

And then back to rags again, I guess.

Sidey: Yeah. So. We, we meet Liza? Liza.

Reegs: Liza, yeah,

Liza Drake.

Sidey: And I could have had a lot more of this bit of the story, to be honest, so, where she

Pete: I'll be honest. I had to pause the film and have a little moment.

Sidey: have a

Pete: Seeing a blunt in her undies.

Sidey: Yeah, because, this

Pete: I

Reegs: John Krasinski, she is,

Sidey: Yes, that's right, yeah.

Pete: I what it did do, I thought, Oh God, cause it's basically like her walking up onto a podium to then do some like pole dancing and there's other like pole dancers around. but she doesn't actually get into the pole dancing at any point.

I was thinking, I was even like trying to like preempt, oh has she trained for this? Is she going to like knock us at like, you know, knock us bandy with their performance? Or is this going to be really like weird and awkward?

Reegs: No, she

Pete: walks the length of the podium and then goes down

Reegs: Well, she sees a guy abandon his drink as he's talking to Pete and she mind sweeps it and, and sits down. And it's not long before they've struck up a conversation. He's kind of sleazing onto her. Do you want to make some money, et

Sidey: she reads him straight away and says, well, you're not in finance because you wouldn't be in this, this is, this is obviously not a high end strip club.

It's like, so you're not a high end finance. I'd say you're an insurance rep. Maybe you're a big farmer or something like that. And he's like,

Reegs: you're an insurance rep

Sidey: and it ends up

Reegs: a big farmer or something like that, and he's like, fuck. And it ends up with She is living out of her suburban sister's garage with her mother, who is also a little bit of a car crash. She's got a home beauty thing that's not quite taken off yet.

Sidey: They've got an app idea. Yeah, that's, that's it.

That's the, that's the marketing strategy app. Make an app

Reegs: And she's got a daughter that we're going to find out is going to be suffering from epileptic seizures.

Sidey: From a brain tumour. Yeah.

Pete: yeah. And, and we're introduced to her because Liza has to go to the school Yeah. Because her daughter is, is committed arson. Yeah. And, and this is

smart, right? So, but this, this is where, this is where we see the, the point of this scene. It like, other than to kind of like reaffirm the kind of like the dysfunctional nature of the, of the family and, and the hard times and

Sidey: Yeah,

Pete: is to Yeah. To show the spin that she puts on absolutely everything.

Yeah, I mean the headteacher goes straight away, well if this isn't an expulsion, and you don't know what it is,

Reegs: She knew the school code as well

Pete: is it? And

Sidey: the head teacher goes straight away. Well, if this isn't an expulsion. You know, thing that I don't know what it is and she's like, well, you know, is it and she's like, well, leaving school properties.

That's the suspension. Something else is that, well, you could make that go away if you want to. And, you know, they get it down to, I think a three day suspension, which is all. So she's good at, she's got the gift of the gab.

Pete: Absolutely, yeah.

Reegs: But it does mean her kid is tagging along during the day and that's gonna

Sidey: it means is they have a fucking huge ding dong with his sister because she's like, well now someone's got to fucking watch her and so it culminates with her being kicked out by her sister and having to go and stay in this sort of

Pete: like.

Sidey: horrific motel place.

Reegs: and one of those very Floridian because this is in Florida and those like pastel hued motel rooms that you've seen on quite a few things.

Sidey: Yeah, they meet a quite nice family there. The

Reegs: guy is already got a Chekhov's arm thing going on where he's got an arm injury, fell off some rich guy's boat. I mean, they hammer home the themes about the poverty and the, you know, the economic circumstances that everybody is finding themselves in.

Sidey: first she's a bit worried because it's just her daughter talking to them and when she goes over they're really welcoming and she gives her some earplugs she said you probably need these, she's like,

Reegs: And they give her a blanket as well, so they can see they're on hard times, can't

Sidey: they?

Yes, it's a rosebud moment isn't so they're nice and she thinks, well, it. I've got nothing to lose. I'll give this Brenna's

a shout and

Pete: lose, I'll give

Sidey: Well, it just explodes.

Pete: give this shout. So it's not I think he says on

Sidey: Yeah. So it's not, I think she says on his business card that didn't have the address because she tries calling a couple of times, gets nothing back.

So then she just rocks up

he's like, well, how did you find us? And so straight away he's like, oh, she's quite intuitive because she's, she's phoned round places. And then she's gone to like effectively, you know, company's house to get the

Reegs: gone to, like, effectively, you know, Cumbie's house to get the address. Vice president or president of sales.

There's some other sleazy bastard that he's competing with the

Pete: The marketing guy. Yeah.

Reegs: going to be, he wants to be chief operations officer. There's a, another guy a money guy. And then there's what's the character's name? Jack Neil, Andy Garcia as the guy who. Patented the drug that this company has Zana Pharmaceutical, it's, it's not really, it's it's more about the delivery

Sidey: Yeah.

it gets into the system

Reegs: Yeah. So it has an ingestion time of five minutes rather than

Sidey: So I didn't know about this, what you see in the They, they show you the delivery of the drugs. And this guy that, the, the main, the first guy that you see it, it's a lollipop kind of thing that they just have to suck on. And it's fucking useless really

Pete: Well, it's like a slow

Sidey: in terms slow. But it's, yeah, it's

Pete: yeah, and everything,

Sidey: And, and this one that they have is a spray that you put under tongue and it's, it goes in in five minutes and that's their pitch, is

Pete: it,

Reegs: and I think it's really key though. She believes that at the beginning she does believe that it's a superior thing and they're targeting cancer patients who are in unbelievable

Sidey: and they're targeted.

Reegs: Well, we'll find that later.

Sidey: are in unbelievable pain. So when she says I was doing it for the right reasons initially, I could believe that.

Reegs: Yeah, I think that, yeah, exactly. And she's naive. She's naive. She's got no economic opportunities. She's clearly extremely bright and tenacious and hardworking, but she's got no opportunities afforded to her until this struggling startup that she's become a part

Pete: So, so what I wanted to say is when, so when she turns up, they're actually in the middle of a meeting with a prospective like buyer or whatever.

And what it does is this scene, it creates a lot of like exposition for the product and, and explains a lot of what we've just covered there. But there's also an explanation that the whole reason why Andy Garcia got into this is because he's had a wife who died of cancer and it wasn't. The fact that she was in pain, it was the fact that, you know, the cancer is bad enough, but it was the fact that they weren't able to manage the pain and, and, you know, the onset of

Sidey: the disease.

Yeah, she died an excruciating,

Pete: that led me to believe, maybe naively, that also that the reason why they all got into it into the first place, maybe not like Chris Evans character, but, but him initially.

Was because it was vocational. There was a purpose to it, but so it's not just Emily Blunt. I think maybe all of them probably at one point came into it with with a view because I mean they're not Fucking working there for all of the perks and the benefits because the place is on its ass. I

Sidey: says this is, you've joined a stinking

Pete: it yeah.

Yeah, so

Sidey: So

he's not, he's not the ruthless like Meg Lomeliak that he becomes later in the film. At the start I think he's fairly genuine and, and

Reegs: Yeah, I think they become twisted by greed,

Sidey: Yeah, they do,

Reegs: I mean, that's part of it. So, he, he, she, he turns, she turns up during this big board meeting. They're all threshing it out and pulls him out of it to argue for a job. And he like fakes a resume for

Sidey: Everyone that works here has got to have a PhD today, and he just writes PhD on

Reegs: yeah, but later we're going to learn that PhD means what was it? Pretty something in desperate or not. It's

Pete: pretty hardworking and desperate, something like that. Yeah. Oh, no, it's not, it's desperate. She, it, her D is desperate, but d but the, I can't remember what the other D was for most people. But anyway, yeah.

Reegs: So, he, he, she's basically.

Kind of almost ticking clock type element given a week to kind of make one sale one

Sidey: One script

Reegs: of this Lonofen is the made up drug in in this

Sidey: And we get to meet the doctor. And this like horrible kind of like precinct strip mauling kind of thing. Yeah

Pete: It

looks, it looks exactly, it gave me massive

Sidey: Lydell. this.

Pete: me massive, like, Breaking Bad vibes, because it's similar to, like, the what's it, like, Souls, like, where, like, it's kind of, yeah, like, these, like, shit, like, law offices and doctors and stuff, basically in a parking

Sidey: But Dr.

Lydell, you could track the the pace of the film by his hair. So he's got hair Island.

Pete: Yeah, yeah,

Reegs: hair island at the beginning. I don't know how

Pete: an Oxbow Lake, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: it's really, really

Sidey: And then later on, he's got a fully I didn't know whether it was a syrup or he had a full

Pete: No, I think he's had a chance because he's able to then afford it. She's like massaging it,

Sidey: guess start nitpicking, right, but he's already got a rep. Who's got their claws into him. So why has he not made a money there and then like he's already got a massive massive big pharma company

Pete: Well, I'm not entirely sure, but let's say you can assume that he's not because where it starts escalating is that they're not making the massive cut from it that they should be like this other drug, this rival drug, the one with the lollipop got their claws into him and that he's writing a load of scripts.

But at the point at which he switches to her and starts bringing money in for them, he's then in a position to start negotiating more. With, with them because they've stolen the market back and it's his opportunity to

Well,

Reegs: his opportunity to Yeah, and that guy goes back to him later

Sidey: and that guy goes back to him later and says I was gonna fucking batter you for not prescribing that to me six months earlier. Yeah, and so he's like fuck. This is actually really good

Reegs: so he's like, fuck, this is actually really good. So he's

Sidey: So he's the guy that they're gonna get their claws into and they do this whole speaker program thing which is

The grey area legality wise, but if you're, if you're big enough and you've got a proper, there's ways to make this a proper thing, but they don't have those

Pete: No, they don't. But it also helps that the rival company are now not allowed to, I can't remember exactly what the specific terms are, but for five years because they've been false advertising that this can be used as a painkiller for, for any, any condition, not just cancer. So they get shot down on that front.

They can still use it as a, as a cancer pain relief.

Reegs: But they're not allowed to do those speaker events. And it was exactly the same thing that had happened years before with this Purdue Pharma. It's just history repeating

Sidey: itself. They say it in this film, they do the nice pause where they say they couldn't do this, they couldn't do that, and they were banned.

No one went to jail, they got a massive fine, and they were banned from doing this. Pause. For five years. I say it's just going to happen again.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, he's the guy, they get him to this thing, and she kind of flirts with him. It's not overtly, I thought, That she might even sleep with him, because the way they set it up earlier

Reegs: much more Yeah. Explicit that some of the other sales reps are gonna bring in a trading on sex,

Sidey: yeah.

But she just gives him attention, he's going through a divorce, so she gives him some, like, just sits by him, holds his hand I think is about as far as it goes it just gets him pissed and he has a good time, and while he's drunk they fucking get him to sign up to

Reegs: So, as

Sidey: he's into it because he can see the, initially, short term, it's having a positive

Pete: he does karaoke, doesn't he? That's quite, like,

Reegs: yeah. And he's singing

Pete: Closing time, it is. Yeah, yeah,

Reegs: it was making me

Pete: it was, yeah. It's a brilliant scene,

Sidey: But he's been labelled the 9 million dollar man. That's what the value of the commissions from him, from whatever he, what scripts he writes is worth 9 million. And so you think, fuck, it's just a tiny little pain management clinic this guy works in.

And so you think, all those dotted around the state, fuck me, you know, that's a fucking lot of money.

Reegs: And they aggressively target them and they recruit in basically a whole bunch of people like strippers that she's worked with uh, her mother, her mother,

Pete: is a bad idea,

Reegs: a guy called, what was the guy called was it Randy?

Sidey: Oh, the gay fella.

Reegs: Well, was

Pete: he's, he's

Reegs: liked a bit of everything.

Pete: yeah, yeah,

Reegs: He was born because his father was going to buy this or would sign off a certain amount of scripts if they hired him.

Yeah, so nepotism,

everything

Sidey: everything on Yeah, and the movie desperately wanted

to

Reegs: And the movie desperately wanted to be Wolf of Wall Street at

Sidey: Wall Street at this

Pete: I, I was getting, initially I was getting strong Erin Brockovich vibes. I thought she was like then gonna like. I didn't think the film was going to go in this way because I didn't know anything about it. So I thought, oh, like she's going to revolutionize how she does this.

And, you know, she's come from a desperate background and now she's like a, an absolute fucking master of her art sort of thing. No.

Sidey: a graph at the bottom and I can't remember it was like predicted interest ometer or something like that so it would be like plots on the x axis and time on the y and this would be a very very predictable film in the sense that it's like rags to riches up here good times bad you know it's very very like formulaic the way it's set out and so this bit of the film is where we get to see her enjoying the the spoils they move into this super swanky condo on the waterfront

Reegs: Her motivation is essentially Supposed to be that she's going to save up money for, there's two operations that her daughter can have and one

Sidey: yeah, I get this.

Reegs: well, again it's, I guess it's another theme because America's fucking stupid and

Sidey: No, that bit I understand. But the f the very first time he goes to see her, when she sat down to talk about money. 'cause he said, oh, you'll make, he goes, remember I said you'd make a hundred? Yeah.

A hundred thousand. You're not gonna make a hundred thousand star. Fuck it gonna be more like 600. Yeah. And you're like, okay, that's a fucking big fucking chunk of money

Reegs: was already enough there to pay that

Sidey: And then later

on, when it goes to talking about. Because she has another seizure.

Right, so we've got to get, there's two procedures. One is alluded to be like a melon ball scooper. The other one's keyhole. That's not covered by Medicare. And then, and she says something like, I've got 200, 000 saved, and I just need to get another four. And you're like, where the fuck has all your money gone?

Reegs: Yeah.

Pete: know, because

Sidey: guess there's loads

Pete: so straight away, you know, they're only, she's only going to get 40 percent of that, plus they have to have somewhere to live, I know they don't have to buy the big fucking condo and everything, but she also, the first thing she does as well, and they show this, because again, they're, they're, I don't know if it was for a specific reason, the first thing she does with the first bit of money she gets is she pays back her sister with

Sidey: a mama car.

Reegs: buys

Pete: buys a, yeah,

Sidey: we were talking.

Pete: pink car, didn't she?

Sidey: Astronomical numbers. The very first deal with one guy was 600 grand, so it doesn't,

Reegs: know. I agree. I agree. But her motivation, she's painted to be very pure. It does matter a little bit, but it's just not the story big would have been interesting to see if they die. Right. I've seen this story twice and it both times.

It has a young female.

Who, you know, downtrodden by the system and, you know, exploits it and eventually grows a conscience and whistleblows and blows the whole thing up, right? Seeing this exact story, I think it would be more interesting for them to go sometimes, people are just fucking greedy, like, they did it, you know, she didn't have to have a kid that was dying, she just did it because she liked money and, you

Pete: Well, how it's portrayed is that they say At the end, the doctor actually says, after the first assessment, it's like, this is this, it's not cancer, he says it's, he specifically says it's not a tumor, but

Sidey: It's a, it's like a bunch of,

Pete: it's, yeah, it's, whatever it is, and goes, and I don't need to see you again for six months, just come in if, if something

Sidey: a seizure.

Pete: yeah, so.

I think that, that probably, and bearing in mind that the 600 grand thing is what he says at the beginning of the first week, it's not, she's got 600 grand that week, it's, that's how much you're gonna earn this year, but, you'd think that her priority would be, well first thing I'm gonna do is sort, you know, yeah, put a roof over their head, but, and pay back people, but I'm gonna put enough aside for, for my daughter's operation, which doesn't seem to be,

Sidey: All of that kind of irks me. But anyway, this is the bit where they're kind of enjoying their spoils, having

Reegs: she's been promoted.

Sidey: yeah, that's a,

Reegs: The company's going through an IPO,

Sidey: sleazy marketing guy gets like, he tries to grass her up, but they don't care because she's so, she's been so pivotal, pivotal to the success that he's like, I don't care.

You can fuck off actually. And so they do that. But now it gets to the point where.

that

amount of revenue is not enough. Nothing is ever enough. And so they just fall into the trap of what we've seen the other ones do

Reegs: Mm-Hmm.

Sidey: Right, well we need, fucking pain is

Reegs: Pain is pain you market this to anybody a migraine you've got my let's have some heroin for a

Sidey: for a migraine. And, and actually what's killing us, Andy Garcia's character, he just starts to fucking lose it. He's like the aviator. Yeah, he does. Very quickly as

Reegs: just starts to fucking lose it. And someone's

Sidey: Yeah, and someone's wearing a wire in one of those or just recording conversations that kind of

Reegs: just recording

Sidey: I did not sign up for this. And yeah, so things are starting to unravel a little bit.

Reegs: Yeah, well Jack, as they go but it's not unravelling because it's still growing and growing and

Sidey: is unraveling.

Reegs: He won't have any, like, formal

Sidey: He, it's like a mob boss. He won't have a phone in in him. Yeah.

Reegs: So when you go to visit him, you're scanned and he has all his emails printed out to him.

Sidey: annotates them.

Pete: Mm.

Reegs: Yeah.

So he this guy, Jack, has sort of completely isolated himself from it all.

Sidey: But they're, they're going towards Pain is Pain and also just write fucking bigger scripts.

Like a hundred milligrams or whatever is not enough. It should be 500, whatever. So they're, they're ruthless. She's now Liza's like, I don't know if this is quite right. And when she goes back to see Dr. Lydell, his clobber is now amazing. Leather trousers with a white belt and a kind of like lacy shirt.

The arms through. But there's a queue out the door of people and then the lobby It's

Pete: zombies.

Yeah, yeah.

Sidey: They're like Messiah complexing him. He's walking in, they're kissing his hand and they're so like, they're just, it's just addicts like all over the

place. It's

Pete: place. The scary thing is that stuff like that probably happened. Maybe not to that

Reegs: No, it did. It did happen with people queuing around the, yeah. And but vulnerable people, you know, young people, people with, who got in accidents and that sort of thing, then suddenly find themselves addicted to, to these

Sidey: coming up to her, as just the rep, and saying I've got cash, just give me the

Pete: joke, because that's when, because there's a sting on him. There's a guy comes in who like says, Oh, I've been on this. They've obviously been working him

Reegs: it's got so seedy now, like he leaves him some cash on you. You're like, Oh

Pete: yeah. And so, but it, that's, that's a sting. And then the police take him away and that's when that scene is where they go up to Liza, just as she pulls up, it's like, oh, have you got any drugs with you?

Like, we'll, give, give you money. It's

pretty bad. And she sees the guy from the motel, the dad with the bad arm, just shuffling around in the car park there as a sign of things to come. She

Sidey: Yeah. Well, yeah, she has a rosebud moment with the blanket. She goes full informant now basically.

Reegs: yeah,

Sidey: but it's very difficult.

The the lack of evidence. So I need to get Jack. They can get everyone else, but,

Reegs: but they've never got anybody right at the top. That's what they were Paynes to point out and never got the CEO.

Sidey: Yeah, and so they, they, she does a sting, doesn't she? She goes she said, well, if you can get us the, the printed out records. It's basically a wish list from all the doctors. Like, okay, I will sign your script if you pay my kids college tuition, if you pay for my golf club membership, if you do this, do that.

And so he's going through them, he's going, yeah, okay, we'll do that. No. He's just writing on it. So if you can get us that. That ties him into it, and I think she does get it, but even that's not good enough. Because he just says, no, I'm a silent partner, I put some money in,

Pete: But I don't think she because Evans, or Pete, accosts her in the car park after

Sidey: his rap?

Yeah,

Pete: After, yeah, after he's done his rap dress as like an inhaler or whatever, like the, the, the, you know, like the spray.

But he, like, accosts her in the car park, because he's like, where you go, and snatches the bag off her and takes it out. So she doesn't have that evidence, but they're, they're gonna go ahead with the, the trials and everything, nonetheless.

Sidey: Yeah,

Reegs: Well, she eventually remembers that her mother, who had had a fling with Jack.

Sidey: Is it the the IPO party? Yeah. The Victory Party. Yeah. She, she, fuck

Reegs: she has intercourse with Jack seduces him and then keeps sending him like, is it Ferrero

Sidey: It's this, these popcorn

Pete: Towers, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reegs: She sent him three.

Pete: three. There's other bits before we get to that, but there's a bit where she goes to Jack and says Look, I need the money for I basically I need 400 000 for my daughter's operation

Reegs: She's got these stock options as

Pete: Right and so because all of this has happened so quickly this has

Sidey: it's not even a year, six months.

Pete: Yeah, so she's still got to wait another few months in order for her to to be vested so that she can then realize some of her her like assets So he she's like look, it's not a it's not a favor.

This is a loan. You'd lend me the money I mean this guy's got Fucking shit tons of money, right? So he could pay this, pay this operation in a heartbeat. And he comes back to her with an answer that's basically like, I'm not going to give you the money because I can see that you're desperate and desperation like is, is your motivation.

You were desperate when you first came in. That's your fire. That's going to, so instead of doing that, I'll tell you how you'll be able to afford it. Go out there and get prescriptions for like any pain management, like whatever it is. Like he's a fucking real

Sidey: oh, and also

Reegs: Ruthless, it's, and that's where it's come right from the top.

Pete: yeah, yeah,

Sidey: he says. You need to get rid of your mother, she needs to be sacked, and then you need to get her to sign this fucking non disclosure thing, fucking

Reegs: fucking hell.

Sidey: So, yeah, after, but then, we get the kind of courtroom scenes Where they're dishing out jail sentences, so Chris Evans gets, I think, 66 months or some weird number. They all go down apart from Jack, there's nothing to tie him, and he's been on, still in magazine covers.

Reegs: covers The doctor says, no, that's right, there

Sidey: quite says inflammation, he says, the doctor says though. That's right. There was only one case of addiction in the 200, but these were,

they were all

Reegs: all heavy opioid users because they were all terminal cancer patients

Sidey: died before

Reegs: died

Pete: died before this. That's when she finds

Reegs: So that's when she finds this out in that. So her moral purity is kind of like her conscience is almost clear until the end of the movie.

Sidey: Yeah. So, I think she's having a conversation with her mother and they kind of, she says, well, I asked him for blah, blah, blah.

She says, well, did you, did you phone him? Yeah. She's like, no. Did you email him?

yeah

I think so. And did he reply? And it's like, well, I don't know. I've got my emails here. They go through and this is the one bit of documentation where they've actually fucking got him bang to rights. Yeah. And so he's, there's a great overhead shot of him swimming naked in the swimming pool.

And he's been really smart. He's had, he's still on magazine covers. And he's had interviews. And he's like, I was just an investor in that company. I had nothing to do with the running of it. You know, he's, you know, whiter than white. But here, Captain Smargy just comes out of his swimming pool and the FBI are just waiting for him.

See you later. And they finally got someone at the top of one of these big pharma companies. But, I feel the cycle is just gonna fucking repeat and repeat.

Reegs: Yeah.

Pete: Absolutely.

Sidey: But she ends up although she displays a lot of contrition and remorse. She's like, I'm sorry, but the judge is like, you know, people have fucking died.

We can't just forget that. And so she has to do, I think just over a year. Yeah.

Pete: yeah, yeah.

Reegs: yeah.

Sidey: And then it's cuts to 15 months later and she's a farmer's market selling homemade beauty products with her mum and some of the other crew.

Reegs: Yeah.

Pete: Indeed.

Reegs: And the end, so, yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: And the daughter does have her operation, but she has the more invasive melon baller job. So

Reegs: So this is a pretty middling, predictable movie with a really good performance from Emily Blunt.

Pete: Mm-Hmm.

Reegs: But yeah.

Pete: Yeah, and Chris Evans as well, I've not really seen him in a great, I've seen him in the Cats in America film, so I can't remember what else I've seen him in to be honest, but he was, he played the, like the,

Sidey: He's just playing.

Pete: character really

Sidey: Yeah, he's playing these a lot now. Try and get away from his sort of all American hero kind of thing.

This is his third streaming one in a row and they've all been villains or like sleazy bastards.

Reegs: sleazy bastards. Funny it desperately wanted to be other movies. Like we talked about Wolf of Wall Street very much, you know, up there and I Tonya a little bit in there and the big short maybe, but not as good as any of those movies and they were determined to make the character of Liza likable, even though she doesn't exist in real life as the center.

So it was a bit baffling really, but really good performance from Emily Blunt at

least,

Sidey: I mean the actual

Reegs: makes you fucking really pissed

Sidey: Yeah, I mean that's the real thing, the story is fucking outrageous. But the film is, yeah, you could, you could, the way it works of main character, rock bottom, good, successful Falls down. You can cut and paste this like a million times over other things and it's been done to death.

But like you say performances are decent. I actually quite enjoyed it when I was watching it,

Reegs: I did as well,

Pete: it was watchable yeah, like I said, I didn't really know how I felt about her character.

Towards the end because I think it was trying to portray some level of simp She got into it for the right reason. She was kind of like hoodwinked to a point she does speak up about the The more she knows the more she speaks up about it but ultimately she still goes along for the ride and and makes a lot of money out of it and and and like you say Like does not prioritize in any way her like daughter's pretty serious like health condition so yeah, it's it You end up feeling just a bit like, you know, nonplussed about it.

Yeah,

Reegs: and you know, Evans is good, but his character is just sleazy and one dimensional and that's it really. So, watch it to get pissed off about it all

Sidey: Yeah, you should know about the thing, the story.

Reegs: know, happening again with all sorts of other industries. I mean, my missus was talking about vaping and the way that that's being in put into pharmacies in like Australia and places like that.

You know, I think medicinal cannabis is a bit like that as well. So, yeah.

Sidey: Don't do drugs, kids.

Reegs: Yeah, well, yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, What we'll do

Reegs: Or do, yeah, it's your choice. Yeah.