I recently got a chance to see Michael Bay’s newest film, Pain & Gain. This film is classic Michael Bay with his explosive nature, but it is more about chaos and stupidity than aliens and guns. Think Bad Boys on steroids without the smoothness. It’s actually hard to decide if this film was so wild that it made it good, or if it was just plain bad (aka Spring Breakers syndrome). Bottom line, Pain & Gain is at best, an entertaining, over-the-top, humorous guilty pleasure.
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Pain & Gain is an unbelievable true story about a group of personal trainers in 1990’s Miami, who are dumb and greedy enough to get caught up in a criminal heist that goes terribly wrong every step of the way. This film features Mark Whalberg, Dwyane Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Rebel Wilson, Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Ken Joeng, and Rob Corddry.
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In Pain & Gain, Whalberg, Johnson, and Mackie are the personal trainers who decide they can pull off the score of a lifetime by extorting one of their clients for everything he owns. When the job doesn’t go according to plan, things quickly get ugly for our main characters as they embark on a “no-turning-back” series of one incompetent act after another. If this film says anything to the audience other than chaos, it is that anyone can pursue the “American dream”, but depending on their chosen path, things do not always end well. Add rising comedian Rebel Wilson and veterans Harris, Shalhoub, Joeng, and Corrdry, along with a lot of profanity, violence, sex, and drug use, and you’ve got yourself a film, if you can call it that.
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Don’t get me wrong, Pain & Gain does offers an abundant amount of entertainment and a lot of great laughs for the audience. The problem with this film is that it is overdone at times, constantly stepping up the madness and foolishness from one scene to another. Whalberg plays a typical ignorant bad-boy as the leader of the three; Johnson plays a giant of a man with a soft heart; Mackie follows along for the ride. Wilson, Coordry, and Joeng add to the humor that offers just about the only thing worth paying attention to, aside from the general lack of intelligence evident in these characters and all the insane situations they get themselves into. The humor is more “three stooges” than anything else.
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Pain & Gain is the ludicrous story that you might see on the news and have trouble believing. This film is nothing more than a mediocre comedy-action adventure featuring well-known actors. Other reviews have been fairly divided, but still in the consensus that this film offers more pain than gain. Personally, I’ll give this movie a 2.7 out of 5 rating. Pain & Gain is rated R for bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use. Running time is 2 hours and 9 minutes.
By: Hayden Pittman, Film Critic for YouPlusDallas
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