Pain Hustlers feels like a retreading of the same ground covered in other recent works, bringing nothing especially new to the table and, in splitting the stylistic difference between slick/breezy and poignant/authentic, succeeding fully at neither.

It's plenty entertaining, but not particularly thoughtful — just enough depth to fill a prescription pad, not a whole book.

Pain Husters manages to avoid feeling like an Adam McKay remake of Dopesick, but its shifting tone never quite hits the right notes.

Pain Hustlers puts the spotlight on the people who were part of a devastating crisis, but its lackadaisical direction and underwhelming performances do the subject matter no justice.