DIRECTOR: Michael Bay
CAST: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry, Rebel Wilson, Ken Jeong, Bar Paly
RUNNING TIME: 129 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: Desperate to live a better life than they do already – a thought concocted by their steroid-drunk brains – three bodybuilders (Wahlberg, Johnson and Mackie) kidnap a wealthy client (Shalhoub) and force him to hand over his assets, which is when things really get out of hand…
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NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Michael Bay was always going to be the right person to film a story like this. It’s aggressive, violent, vulgar, unpleasant, mean, uncomfortable, ugly, and irrevocably stupid… and so is the story.
Bay’s lowest-budgeted film for a long while, it just proves that no matter what size cost his films may be, they are all going to be the same type of film: loud and obnoxious while pandering the lowest common denominator. Pain and Gain is no different, but it somehow becomes a harder task to watch than, say, his Transformers movies. Most of this stems from how despicable and horrible these main characters are, and the methods they use to get what they want. They kidnap and torture Tony Shalhoub’s douche of a victim, make him sign away everything he has to them, and then enjoy their new lifestyle without a care in the world while Shalhoub spends the rest of the film battered and broken. To give this film some credit, these were horrible people to begin with and the movie does not want us to sympathise with then in any respect. They are killers, plain and simple, but the big apparent joke is that they are as dumb as a brick.
That’s another thing about the movie which makes it uncomfortable: it’s supposed to be this sort of black comedy where the laughs come from dark situations and how they handle them. At the beginning, narration tells us that “unfortunately, this is a true story”; later, when Dwayne Johnson’s cokehead sociopath cooks his victims’ hands on a barbeque outside, on-screen text reminds us that “this is still a true story”. Precisely because it’s all loosely based on real events, the fact that it is played for unadulterated laughs is not only disrespectful to the real-life victims but, and you could argue this makes it worse than it being disrespectful, it never becomes funny. You can play these people up as The Three Stooges on steroids, but they’re still murderers and, in case you haven’t noticed Mr. Bay, murder is not funny. It’s murder, plain and simple. And you want us to laugh at someone who has committed a serious felony because “oh look, he so stoopid, derpy, derpy, derp”. Sorry Michael, humour doesn’t work that way. It’s just nasty and reckless.
On the acting side, Mark Wahlberg is in one of his more aggressive roles and Johnson, to be fair, delivers perhaps his most defined performance yet. However, Anthony Mackie feels very out of place as the third member of this criminal gang of bodybuilders. It’s a shame, because his performances in The Hurt Locker and The Adjustment Bureau prove that he is much stronger (ironically) and better suited in those kind of movies, not loud, dumb Michael Bay action-“comedies”. It’s just not his comfort zone. Everyone else, from Ed Harris’ private detective to Ken Jeong’s cameo as a motivational speaker, is varied but the funniest out of all of them is Rebel Wilson – yeah, big shocker, Rebel Wilson is the funniest thing in a movie, but it’s true – whose final moments as she testifies at court almost make the movie funnier than it should be.
For what it is, Pain and Gain is a Marmite movie. Unfortunately, this reviewer got the sourer part of the stuff, because the overall experience was so much it almost brought on a headache. It is remorseless, rotten, sexist, ugly and all of the adjectives used in the opening paragraph. Even if you’re a fan of Michael Bay, you probably won’t like this film. There are no more negative words to describe it, it is just that vile.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Pain and Gain is, simply enough, all pain and no gain. Despite some committed turns by Dwayne Johnson and Rebel Wilson, everything else about is aggressive, abusive, hateful and just unpleasant. If you can make it through without getting some sort of nausea, then you have our utmost respect.
