Florida-based fitness trainer Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) has a buff body but can’t get the cash he needs to realise his dreams. Driven to extremes, Daniel hatches an insane kidnap-and-extortion scheme recruiting brain-dead bodybuilders Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) and Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) to target one of his wealthy gym clients, obnoxious entrepreneur Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub). Needless to say, things go horribly wrong.
Based on a ghastly true story documented by Miami journalist Pete Collins in a series of articles and his like-named book, Pain & Gain might have drawn a better reception from critics had it been made by any filmmaker other than the bête-noire of serious cineastes, Michael Bay. A man whose name has become synonymous with a crash-bang-wallop style of blockbuster filmmaking despised by critics but adored by fourteen year old kids and, let’s face it, more than a few less discerning grownups the world over. Yet viewed in retrospect, hiring Bay to direct this steroid-amped satire of the American Dream was a stroke in genius. His bombastic, hyper-fetishistic style envisions exactly the kind of perverse action-fantasy the real-life ’roid-addled protagonists probably imagined for themselves. Daniel Lugo and Paul Doyle inhabit the twisted flip side of a Michael Bay movie, with all that that entails: buff heroes, bodacious babes, a mile-a-minute pace and big, improbable set-pieces - all the more astounding in this instance because, as the opening narration informs us “unfortunately, this is based on a true story.”
Set in 1995, the year of Bay’s Bad Boys, the film adapts body-building and the obsession with bigger is better into a metaphor for American capitalism gone mad. Co-written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley, the duo interestingly behind Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the script lambasts the lunkheaded, greed-is-good-on-steroids philosophy eating America from the inside, as embodied in the character of maniacal motivational speaker Johnny Woo (Ken Jeong, of The Hangover (2008) and sublime sitcom Community) whose absurd mantra (“Don’t be a don’t-er, be a do-er!”), Daniel adopts as his own. The film drew its fair share of criticism in the US, not least from relatives of the real victims, for a perceived attempt to paint the perpetrators of a heinous crime in a semi-sympathetic light. But none of the characters, including the victims, emerge as sympathetic even though Markus, McFeeley and, yes, Bay succeed in making them compelling.
The film is perfectly cast with stars Wahlberg and Johnson subverting their established screen personas. Wahlberg’s boyish charm makes Daniel Lugo an almost pitiable figure that brings to mind Oliver Hardy’s famous description of his own comic persona as a dumb guy all the dumber for actually believing himself smart. Johnson is a revelation as the deluded born again Christian-cum-closet psychotic whose antics seem off-the-wall even before he gets hooked on cocaine. No Michael Bay movie would be complete without a scene-stealing turn from a pneumatic starlet. Israeli supermodel Bar Paly injects some serious va-va-voom yet also displays solid comic charisma in the role of the Eurotrash Barbie-like stripper whom Daniel easily dupes into serving as the honey trap in his ingenious scheme. Elsewhere, Bay relishes an array of absurd supporting turns including Rebel Wilson as a nunchaku wielding nympho nurse. She proves the surprise love interest for Adrian, whose preoccupation with his steroid-shrunk genitals yields further cheap laughs.
Coming across like a Three Stooges movie penned by Elmore Leonard, the meandering narrative gets a little clunky in parts which is more due to Bay’s fondness for eye-catching digressions than the solid script. But just when the viewer feels ready to jump ship, Bay reels you back in with another outrageous plot twist. Things get so outrageous in fact that towards the finale, the film actually throws up a title card insisting “this is still a true story.” The frantic failed kidnap attempts are flat-out hilarious including one staged like a parody of a bad Cannon ninja movie from the Eighties, but Bay’s peculiar preoccupation with gay sex toys adds a faint though still unwelcome note of homophobia.
It is a scattershot satire, less than subtle and routinely crass but, hey, that’s Bay. More importantly for once the hyberbolic tone befits the subject matter. Plus, you can’t help but relish one laugh out loud moment where, in the midst of a failed robbery and accidental multiple murder, Daniel takes time out to clear his head and pump some iron.
Most of the reviews are saying, in effect, this is an idiotic wallow in hateful and repellent bile, dressed up with misogyny and all the more insulting for making fun of a genuine horror. So you're going out on a limb here! How would you defend Bay against this massive slagging off?
Posted by:
Andrew Pragasam
Date:
30 Aug 2013
Trust me, I'm as reluctant to defend Michael Bay as any other sane man. But the fact is most of the negative reviews are simply reacting to his past track record. The film is bombastic and crass but so were the protagonists, both victims and perpetrators. It's such a ghastly, garish true life atrocity it arguably took someone like Bay to tell this story. His bombastic style makes it seem like we are watching events unfold in real-time in Daniel Lugo's steroid-addled mind. In short, it works.
Then again, I'm a guy who likes the first Transformers movie.
Posted by:
Jason Cook
Date:
31 Aug 2013
I found this a totally repugnant movie. The characters are all hateful, its attempts at black humour fall flat & the whole thing is shot through with mean-spiritedness. What is it trying to be? A darkly comic crime thriller? Well it fails. A satire on the macho aggressive capitalist ideology of America? Well it fails. Who cares though when it is at heart a morally dubious endeavour that runs out of steam well before the end credits role.
Posted by:
Andrew Pragasam
Date:
2 Sep 2013
While I agree that the characters are thoroughly despicable, the film is not out to endorse their behaviour merely scrutinise it via a brash, crass style filmmaking approximating their deluded, steroid addled mindset. Had the film set out to offer a more sober account, employing someone other than Michael Bay, we would likely have wound up with an over-earnest TV movie. To my mind the producers made a bold choice. Its nearest equivalent would be the Holly Hunter movie The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, which took another lurid true crime story and presented it as farce.
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