Movie Review: Pain and Gain

It has been awhile since I could recommend a Michael Bay film. Pain and Gain is, for me, a good example of what Michael Bay can do for a movie which compliments his normal approach to directing. Starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson among others, Pain and Gain is a film I would recommend you see, although far from flawless.

Pain and Gain opens with a shot of Mark Wahlberg working out, but then getting chased by the cops. It then flashbacks and follows the story of three body builders (Mark Wahlberg and The Rock being two of them) from a gym as they embark on a plan to get rich. Their plan involves kidnapping a wealthy patron of the gym and then forcing him to relinquish all his property. The only downside to this plan is that they are not very good at kidnapping and extorting money and so tend to bumble from one mistake to the next. Bumble may not be the right word for this, as implies some kind of Three Stooges shenanigans. This movie is definitely a dark comedy, as some of my favourite scenes in the movies include The Rock trying to dispose of a body or them attempting to murder their wealthy patron, which are definitely not shenanigans.

The dark comedy style of the movie is further enhanced by the introduction sequences each character gets. Whenever a new character is introduced (right down to the ditzy blonde), they get a little cut-away flashback where they voice-over their lives to show how they ended up where they were. There were a couple of characters that they didn’t do this for which I would have liked to see their stories (the third richest man in Miami springs to mind), but that may have left it feeling overdone. I thought this really helped give even pretty bland characters a level of emotional connection with the audience.

The visual style of this film I felt meshed well with the plot. Allot of the events in the film were over-directed and shot to be bigger than they actually were, with things such as slow motion shots, revolving camera shots and rapid cuts. For the Transformers movies, I always wished the camera would just watch the robots fight rather than jumping around allot. Pain and Gain was the opposite. I felt that the film would have gotten visually boring (how many scenes of a man in captivity or working out do you need) pretty quickly without the visual flair that Michael Bay is accustomed to. Maybe Michael Bay’s over-directing style is much better suited to small-scale or no-action scenes, strangely enough.

Even with the unique style, however, the film is far from flawless. One of the biggest downsides is its length (130 minutes). This wasn’t helped by having to watch a Red Bull athlete profile (for my session anyway) giving this movie around 30 minutes of trailers. This movie also occasionally loses track of the plot or introduces elements that have no pay-off or are pointless (the private investigators back problem, for example).

Although I can see that Pain and Gain won’t be for everyone, overall I would recommend this film. The dark-comedy style meshed in well with the over-directed visual style. The plot was solid (and based on a true story apparently) and the actors also did a very good job with the material. With so many sequels and remakes coming out, I felt that this new movie gives Michael Bay some credit ... Until he destroys the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

4 out of 5 jacked-up waffles.