Movie Nation

“Pain Hustlers” is a “true story” inspired drama whose tone and story arc match that of the real “triumph of medicine” to “tragedy invented by Big Pharma” saga of opioids, the “pain” drug that many maintain “broke America.”

The film opens jaunty as it takes us to a strip club recruiting session where pharmaceutical hustler Pete (Chris Evans) recruits single-mom/failed pole dancer Liza (Emily Blunt) to push this new relief med meant for stage four cancer patients suffering “cancer breakthrough pain.” We get lessons in how pharmaceuticals are “pitched” to doctors, the not-so-secret gimmick of having ex beauty queens, working on commission, do the pitching and the pecking order of Big Pharma.

Purdue Pharma earns another much-deserved backhanded slap.

And then we’re taken inside Zanna, a sketchy Florida-based Little Pharma firm with a pain drug it wants to ride to riches, if only these plucky pill pirates can talk doctors into “writing our scripts.”

We meet that stripper, see her real-life struggles and get competing views on just how good or at least “effective” she was at her hustle as the movie sets up with an “interviews after the fact” framework that slips into voice-overs as Liza and Peter — with others pitching in — describe each other as the villains or bigger villains in an epidemic that we know, by the third act, will be killing people.

A money moment in this somewhat flat David Yates (he made the most boring of the “Harry Potter” pictures) saga comes when it’s all going wrong, Liza checks on a doctor only to arrive after he’s been arrested and his parking lot is full of desperate, addicted patients who close in around her Mercedes convertible like zombies in the comeuppance scenes in a horror flick.

This true story — transported from Arizona to Florida with the names changed to force us to look up the real criminals — keeps most of the victims faceless, and most of the corruption a slow drift from rust to outright rot as shortcuts are taken, doctors are won over with bribes and a lot of people get rich as the sick get addicted.

Liza and Peter give their big discoveries — “Doctors are just as greedy and horny as everybody else.” — via voice-over. But Evans’ patter never slacks off as Pete hard-sells Liza, instructs her that “Commissions get you into heaven” and even raps his enthusiasm for their relief-for-the-cancerous-and-possibly-dying drug at one point.

Evans’ upbeat and hyper Amoral Pete is our Everyman, easily corrupted if the money’s right. Liza is meant to be the conscience of the piece and Blunt sells that “everybody’s got their reasons for cheating and preying on the vulnerable” sob story like a true believer.

But we see her as an incompetent single mother (Chloe Coleman plays her out-of-control and seizure-prone tween) and a slacker, but one with great people-reading skills and a dab of compassion that most everyone else depicted lacks.

Andy Garcia, as “Pharma’s fuzziest billionaire,” could have been the mercurial, eccentric scene stealer in another director’s hands. Here, he gives us a villain’s journey from eccentric to demented and demanding (more cash).

Catherine O’Hara plays Liza’s screwy, short-attention-span mother, “the only one who believed in you” who finds her way onto this gravy train at one point.

There have been movies and TV series that peeled back layers of this under-the-table practices in this world, and Netflix had its own widely-seen documentary series on this world, its practices and amorality (“Painkiller”). But the new wrinkles this “zero market share” to market-dominating firm’s story throws out there are amusing — ways to counter the competition’s bombshell saleswomen, finding downmarket doctors willing to take lucrative shortcuts in the face of the the lone contrary voice in every company (Jay Duplass) who cashes the checks but who lazily whines about “compliance.”

“Pain Hustlers” has a buzz, here and there. But the story and these characters never really get their hooks in us as Yates leans on the sentimental, takes us to an indifferent climax, and then throws in a couple of anti-climaxes to boot.

The moving scenes land flat because the movie isn’t really about victims. Blunt is good, although her Southern stripper’s accent isn’t really obvious until Liza has a court date. A canny play for sympathy from the jury?

And Evans does so many variations of his patented fast-talking spiel that it loses its effectiveness by the second act.

As the folks in this rise and fall of Pharma Frauds saga could tell you, it’s the third act where all the consequences show up and the piper must be paid. That’s where this story’s make-or-break moments are parked, and there are too few of them to let it get off the screen with as much promise as it opened with.

Rating: R for language throughout, some sexual content, nudity and drug use

Cast: Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Catherine O’Hara, Chloe Coleman, Brian d’Arcy James, Amit Shah, Jay Duplass and Andy Garcia

Credits: Directed by David Yates, scripted by Wells Towers, based on the reporting and book by Evan Hughes. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:05

Almost all the reviews of the video game adaptation “Five Nights at Freddy’s” have been bad. Awful. Or in one case, calling it just the worst.

But Universal/Blumhouse had a killer premise, good trailers and when I left the theater after seeing it, the lobby was jammed, and not just with “Swifties” either.

It’s a PG-13 kiddie (ish) horror show, and they’re lining up to see it. Too young to care about reviews.

Apparenty how many “Youtubers” are in the bit player cast is what matters more, parents of tweens I know tell me. There are seven in this, bless their hearts. Not “playing” anything that anybody other than their online fans would notice.

Deadline.com is calling this the Halloween weekend record as it rolls up some $78 million. It had a big Thursday night ($10 million+) and a huge Friday.

Word of mouth at how bad it is, how poorly scripted, directed and acted (Josh Hutcherson’s quote will soar, no matter what, thanks to this hit), didn’t stem the tide. If you have tweens or grand-tweens, they were all about “Freddy’s,” and many went twice, if their promises are to be believed.

I ducked into the “Eras Tour” Taylor Swift doc for about half an hour while waiting for “Freelance” to start. Epic production, not the most flattering display of her singing and (quite limited) “movement” talents. It’s still making buckets of cash and has turn Tay Tay into a billionaire, according to the financial mags that aren’t owned by Russians. It’s falling off steeply, but the film’s pulling in another $14 million and change this weekend, and will have cleared the $150 million mark by midday Monday. I’ll bet she’s glad she rolled this out before Beyonce’s similar venture “coming soon.”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” is doing very well for a draggy three and a half hour long epic about poisoning and shooting Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma — another $9 million this weekend. The fall-off this weekend was a LOT steeper than expected (it was predicted to pull in $12+). It might clear the $50 million mark by next Friday.

“After Death,” from Angel Studios, is a doc that managed some $5 million comforting the faithful about the hereafter.

“Exorcist: Believer” enjoys one last weekend in the top five at $3.1 million

John Cena’s bloody “Freelance” action comedy underwhelmed in the worst way. He’s not a huge draw, nor is Allison Brie or anybody else in the cast (Christian Slater is the biggest supporting name, with Juan Pablo Raba and Marton Csokas also on board. It’s pretty bad, violent and not the least bit serious and only rarely funny.

It didn’t crack the top 5. It cleared $2, just behind the $2.15 million another weekend’s take of the “Paw Patrol” sequel.

Here’s the final Sunday afternoon “Estimate” from @BoxOfficePro.

Colombian-born Spanish actor Juan Pablo Raba vamps, flashes his teeth, sings a bit and wears the icecream-colored suit of a Central American dictator with panache in “Freelance,” a very dumb John Cena action comedy that Raba pretty much steals.

“You must STROKE the head you are going to cut off,” he purrs.

New Zealander Marton Csokas shows real commitment by slinging a mean South African accent as a mercenary in the employ of unseen mineral oligarchs out to depose that corrupt but debonair dictator to give them easier access to the natural resources of fictional Palodonia.

The director of “District B-13” is on board, so the effects are first rate, the fights tight and the stunts are pretty good — a few jarring moments when the action is sped up to make fights “believable” excepted.

But “very dumb” barely covers how silly and violent this half-assed Banana Republic riff turns out to be.

Cena plays an ex Special Forces trooper who loses his “purpose” when he has to quit, become a lawyer and support his wife (Alice Eve) and little girl. Then his old comrade in arms (Christian Slater), founder of a “Contracted Defense Initiatives” (mercenary) company offers him a big paycheck for escorting a scandalized reporter looking for a comeback via her college roommate’s friend, President Venegas (Raba).

She will interview this interview-shy tyrant in the land where Mason Pettit’s special ops team was almost wiped out on a years-before mission to assassinate President Venegas. Lawyer Pettit will gear up and ensure Claire Wellington (Brie) survives. But he’s not happy about it, and now he’s newlycseparated from his wife.

Only when they get there, the charming Venegas barely has a chance to sweet-talk arrogant reporter Claire and make assorted “petite” jokes about Pettit when there’s a coup attempt, which Pettit foils with a combination of bravado, muscle memory and blind luck.

Now he’s trying to get this reporter and her “scoop” out of the country, with the smarmy dictator in tow and all sorts of folks wanting them all dead.

“You’ve gotta be alive to have the scoop of a lifetime,” Pettit reasons.

Cena , a funnyman/muscleman, plays this guy as physically as well as emotionally vulnerable. Old injuries have him moaning and groaning. He’s conflicted about saving the dictator and rattled by the way the reporter’s attentions turn from contemptuous to flirtatious.

And he’s trying real hard to impress her — shooting down helicopters and the like. “Pretty cool, huh?”

At times, the script has the guy show off his education to the uppity journalist, most recently reduced to MTV-style “celebrity cribs” stories and the like. Is she desperate enough for a comeback that she’ll sugar coat a tyrant?

“Please read Hannah Arendt,” who coined the phrase “The Banality of Evil,” Pettit blurts at one point, a reference over the heads of the target audience this movie was going for.

It’s as if the screenwriter is trying to convince us or somebody that this isn’t as stupid and childishly violent (gun fetishizing) as we can plainly see it is.

But Raba is a hoot, and even if Csokas isn’t in the bloom of brawling, villainous youth, he gives fair value and he and Brie and Raba and even Cena show commitment to their parts in all this far beyond what this nonsense deserved.

They’re kind of fun to watch even if “Freelance” isn’t.

Rating: R, for violence, nudity and profanity

Cast: John Cena, Allison Brie, Juan Pablo Raba, Christian Slater, Alice Eve and Marton Csokas.

Credits: Directed by Pierre Morel, scripted by Jacob Lentz. A Relativity release.

Running time:

Characters have a blase, matter-of-fact acceptance of the central premise of the horror video game turned film “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” that a threadbare animatronic band of characters from a long-closed pizza joint have supernaturally come to life.

You can see it in the unanimated wooden delivery of Josh Hutcherson as his character announces this discovery, the flat matter-of-fact way “Mike” lies about a fellow character coming to the same conclusion.

“I saw your eyes,” he says to Officer Vancessa (Elizabeth Lail), almost dozing off as he speaks. “You were terrified.”

The crimes associated with these mothballed machines are bland and perfunctory, the direction dull and the script inept in the extreme.

It’s an adaptation that fails in the most matter-of-fact ways, a horror movie that doesn’t frighten, a script that feels like an idea Stephen King tossed in the fire, a cast that underwhelms and a story that forgets where it’s going, where it’s been and every detour that’s trotted out to distract us.

Emma Tammi’s kiddie horror film — she did “The Wind” a few years back — tries to tell the “story” of this video game in cinematic terms, and doesn’t come anywhere close to working.

Apparently inspired by ShowBiz Pizza’s “Rock-afire Explosion” 1980s animatronic character band, “Five Nights” is set in a tumbledown Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Palace in BFE, Midwestern America. Freddy’s “was big in the ’80s,” the guy in charge of the property (Matthew Lillard) explains to his new night watchman, Mike (Hutcherson, of “Hunger Games” fame).

Mike is “Mister Doesn’t Work Nights” until the threat of a court date from his aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson, a stand-out in the cast) who wants to take custody of the little sister (Piper Rubio) Mike is raising on his own.

Mike is a would-be parent and a “hero” with “issues.” He sleeps. A lot. He’s haunted by a trauma from his past, the abduction of a younger brother. He is reading a book on “Dream Theory,” and taking sleeping pills to ensure he sleeps so that he might remember that Nebraska pine forest kidnapping, maybe recover a detail that will lead him to this brother’s kidnapper.

No wonder his aunt figures a “criminal endangerment” rescue of little Abby is in order. But Abby isn’t having it.

“She’s mean and she smells of cigarettes.”

That’s why Mike needs this night-watchman job to work out, sleep or no sleep. The quartet of bug-eyed animatronics include a “Fazbear” bear, a dog, a duck and “Foxy.”

One even holds an animatronic eyeballed cupcake. Mike is a bit spooked. And that’s before he sees the creatures, who aren’t nailed to the floor but have the “lithium” battery powered ability to wander about, give him the narrowed-eyes of menace. That’s before he finds blood on their animatronic plush-toy hands.

The script clumsily tries to “explain” Freddy’s crew in electronic and augmented human-costumed terms. It struggles to hide who the villain might be.

And it makes a hash out of the GFPD (Great Falls, Grand Forks?) cop (Lail) who shows up to explain the place’s troubled history, to flirt with Mike, or threaten to shoot him after she’s already tossed his presecription sleeping meds into the river.

Hutcherson has been in good movies, but judging by what we see here, he’s an actor who hasn’t improved on his limited child actor repertoire. It’s not a good role, another kids’ film for him, despite the efforts to make Mike a mental mess, and Hutcherson is just terrible in it. Every non-reaction plays false.

I hate singling out actors because bad movies are rarely their fault, but Hutcherson’s performance is right at home in this stuffed dog of a thriller.

They shoved seven obscure-to-anyone-over-20 youtubers into bit (or costumed) parts to ensure the picture would have a social media footprint, even if the plot and acting weren’t all there.

Every now and then, you get the sense that Tammi and the other writers figured that making this laughable might be the safest route to take. Not that any of the five folks credited with cooking up the game and trying to turn a “story” idea into a script shows any flair for comedy.

About the only laughs here are unintentional ones, as in “These fools thought that would be funny.” It never is.

Rating: PG-13, graphic, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizzabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard.

Credits: Directed by Emma Tammi, scripted by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi and Seth Cuddeback, based on the video game by Scott Cawthon. A Blumhouse/Universal release.

Running time: 1:50

Yeah, not every movie critic would spend a year on refresher Spanish courses and a week in Panama just to “research” a review on John Cena’s Banana Republic action comedy “Freelance.”

A movie about a Central American country going through an attempted coup, with mineral rights and the rich and the powerful having their way of things going back hundreds of years? Ask Dole why they call them “Banana Republics.”

Panama was going through a fresh round of street protests over a bad mine deal that smacks of corruption, protests that blocked some intersections during my visit, denying access to some museums (which closed) and stirring up tear gas battles some nights.

Good prep for reviewing a John Cena movie about a Latin American “president for life” dictatorship hinging on foreign mercenaries, mineral rights, revolutionaries and “American Intervention.”

Commitment, or as they say in the movie, “embrace the suck.” Not that Panama sucks. Gorgeous country, lovely people, great imperialist canal and what not.

Doolin, Ireland is a village of 300 souls that you pass through on your way to the County Clare’s famed Cliffs of Moher on the stark, windswept and treeless west coast of the country.

You might notice Doolin, ponder its tiny gathering of old, spare houses, the harbor where a ferry and tour boats set off for the Aran Islands, and consider the presence of not one for four pubs in the place. But if your rental car windows are rolled down and it’s the right time of day, you can’t help but pick up on the reason the place is famous. It’s the epicenter of “trad” or traditional Irish music.

“The Job of Songs” is a warm, intimate documentary that celebrates Doolin, Ireland’s musical reputation and history through the performers who keep traditional Irish music alive there, who sing and play and relate the history of the music, the songs that are mostly passed down “from the ancestors” for hundreds of years and the performers that came before them.

In modern times, it was the Russell brothers made Doolin famous and a magnet for the music sometimes labeled “diddley-aye” by some who see it as an Irish stereotype. But to the fans and practicioners here, it’s a connection to the past and a universal bond.

“We’re only carrying music. It ain’t ours.”

Lila Schmitz’s film has locals describe the quiet and loneliness of the place, which was even more remote before the Cliffs became one of the world’s greatest tourist attractions.

Traditional music DJ Eoin O’Neill, host of “The West Wind” show on Clare-FM (and online) speaks of “the sadness” that lingers from the long British occupation of Ireland, “the great famine” and the wrenching uprooting of Irish migration.

Several generations of fiddlers, flutists and tin whistlers, drummers and concertina players such as singer/flutist Kate Theasby, recall their “I heard a tune and had a go” learning process.

Others write songs and gather in a recording studio to jam and perhaps lay down a track. And all find themselves evenings, either as a steady gig or just informal gathering, at one of those four pubs or down the road in Lisdoonvarna’s music pubs, playing.

The singer-songwriter Luka Bloom, who changed his name as he’s the younger brother of modern Ireland’s most famous folk singer, Christy Moore, breaks down the function of music in society as it plays out in Ireland, “the job of songs” to “entertain,” touch, to move and spark memory.

Schmitz’s film breaks down the risks of this obsession with music, the solitary melancholy of the place and the alcohol consumption that can accompany a “session” of players jamming at Gus O’Connor’s, Fitz’s Bar, McGann’s or McDermott’s Pub on any given evening.

But for those who overcome that, or avoid that trap altogether like the ancient one-legged wonder, Ted McCormac, performing this music becomes a life-affirming mission, one that no passing tourist or appreciator of the “job” songs perform, will ever forget.

Rating: unrated, discussion of alcoholism, suicide

Cast: Luka Bloom, Eoin O’Neill, Kate Theasby, Christy Barry, Ted McCormac and others

Credits: Directed by Lila Schmitz. A Lila Schmitz release available on iTunes, etc.

Running time: 1:13

He went for grandeur, the artist as emotionally needy being, and “larger than life” with this trailer for the holiday release/Oscar contender “Maestro.”

Cooper’s got the voice, the walk, the bravado down pat. Maybe people will stop talking about the prosthetic nose, now.

Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, SARAH SILVERMAN? — Matt Bomer and Maya Hawke star in Netflix’s best hope for Best Picture, a Dec. 20 release.

I’d lost touch with “The Ring” universe, assuming, like most Western filmgoers, that 2017’s failed reboot “Rings” was the end of the hairy horror harpy from the well tale.

Silly me. The “cursed video” whose viewers die mysterious deaths within 24 hours of watching it lives on in Japan. I count 14 film incarnations of the story first spun by actor and novelist Kôji Suzuki, and a TV series.

Of late, this creepy and influencial “J-horror” franchise has wandered into the area of camp, rebranded under the name of the demon/witch “Sadako” who appears on the vhs tape that gets handed around and copied, killing all — or almost all — who dare to view it.

“Sadako DX” is the latest film, now on Netflix, a variation of the story long after the letters “vhs” disappeared from the ranks of watchable media. Yes, the kids joke about that here. But the movie? It’s a goof that isn’t that goofy, and a horror film that fails utterly to horrify.

Our witch has lost her ability to shock, thanks to inept editing. We see too much of her to be scared. And it’s obvious witchy demon Sadako has learned to use conditioner, removing the fearsome frizziness that made her so terrifying to Japanese audiences, and Naomi Watts in the first Hollywood adaptation.

Here, a very smart Japanese coed and quiz show champ, Ayaka (Fuka Koshiba) matches wits on TV with spirutalist Kenshin (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi of “Ip Man” and “Limbo”) as they banter about this wave of “unexplained deaths” sweeping Japan.

“Curses are real,” says the showman/charlatan. Not so fast says Ms. Smarty Pants.

Of course he’s right and she’s wrong. Ayaka’s “200 IQ” take on the problem is to treat this original “viral” video like any other virus. Block its spread, or dilute its effects. “Herd immunity.” Something like that.

Director Hisashi Kimura can’t find a fright to save his life. So he infects his film with mousy-voiced pixie characters, mugging screen veterans, with cheap jolts involving the station’s plush character mascot and deaths that aren’t moving, alarming or amusing.

“Sadako DX” is so bad one wonders if “The Ring” franchise fell off, film by film, or if those recent Japanese “Sadako” movies were all awful, and Netflix is just now getting around to licensing one thanks to that October demand for horror.

hewrd immunity

Rating: TV-14, horror

Cast: Fuka Koshiba, Hiroyuki Ikeuchi, Mario Kuroba and Yuki Yagi

Credits: Directed by Hisashi Kimura, scripted by Yuya Takahashi, based on the novel by
Kôji Suzuki. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38

Erivo is a refugee who has made it to a Greek island, Shawcat is a tour guide she meets and befriends in this film festival darling, a February release.

Boudica, the wronged-woman turned warrior queen heroine of Roman era British history, has been featured in lots of movies over the decades, pretty much all of them B-pictures.

“Boudica: Queen of War” doesn’t break that curse. But as B-movies go, this just-stylish-enough Roman-gutting Olga Kurylenko star vehicle is the most fun of the lot.

Writer-director Jesse V. Johnson — “Hell Hath No Fury” was his — bathes his action scenes in the literal fog of pre-history. Kurylenko, the Ukrainian model whose turn as a “Bond Babe” 15 years ago led to a lucrative career in modest-budget action pictures, handles fight choreography well enough that one isn’t allowed to dwell on the dainty throw weight the willowy runway-ready brings to a fight.

Well, she IS Ukrainian.

And her reaction to this Roman outrage or that Roman garrison awaiting her vengeance is downright quotable, in impolite company.

“F–K them!”

Before she was labeled “Boudica” (Victorious Queen) she was the First Century wife of the king of the Iceni tribe (Clive Standen), doting mother of twin tween girls (Litiana and Lilibet Biutanaseva, who have worked with Kurylenko before and it shows), resigned to paying tribute to the occupying Italians, but not thrilled about it.

When her husband is killed, she signs over half her kingdom to the Roman procurator (Nick Moran, terrific), whose name is given a Monty Pythonesque pronunciation here — Catus Decianus.

But he barks about the rules of Roman patriarchy and the “insult” of her female-in-power status, takes her kingdom, has her stripped, flogged and branded in the face, her girls (history tells us) raped.

She recovers with the help of fierce Celtic woman warrior Cartimanda (Lucy Martin), who was the first to call her “Boudica” as the embodiment of a Druid prophecy, the one who would “free” her people.

Boudica’s fury accompanies training with a bronze sword — mocked in this Iron Age world — she inherits, which appears to have magical powers. She wins over other tribes led by warriors like Wolfgar (Peter Franzén), drops a few Celtic f-bombs about the Romans, and there is hell to pay in this corner of the empire mismanaged by the fey, decadent emperor Nero, a loinclothed hedonist given a Chalamet softness by Harry Kirton.

Yes, there are elements and moments that we’re pretty much invited to laugh at here. But much of the history (three Roman historians wrote about Boudica, Tacitus the most famous) checks out. The supernatural sequences have a Joan of Arc edge. I like the foggy almost “300” netherworld Johnson creates for the action scenes and the way the script connects mother with her daughters.

It’s a B-movie, not “Killers of the Flower Moon,” even if it is somewhat better looking than that overlong streaming epic.

And Martin, Moran and our leading lady bring fair value to a picture that struggles to be respectful but never wholly escapes camp.

Rating: R, bloody violence, Celtic F-bombs

Cast: Olga Kurylenko, Clive Standen, Peter Franzén, Nick Moran, Leo Gregory, Rita Tushingham and Lucy Martin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jesse V. Johnson. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:41