Pain & Gain

PAIN & GAIN

Director : Michael Bay

Year : 2013

Genre : Comedy

Rating : 

After the release of 'Transformers : Dark Of The Moon', director Michael Bay announced that his next movie wouldn't be a huge blockbuster or a generic action movie, but an art house comedy. I and many other critics were shocked into silence and we waited with baited breath to see if Michael Bay could return to the directorial style that made him such a huge success in 1990's with films such as 'Armageddon' and 'Bad Boys'. Now 'Pain & Gain' has been released into cinemas and after having watched it, I can say that it is without a doubt that it is the worst movie Michael Bay has ever made! It is worse than the 'about as historically accurate as the Flintstones  'Pearl Harbour', it is worse than the 'Transformers' trilogy which somehow managed to pornographise a children's toy, it is even worse than 'The Island'. Oh, these movies are bad, they are really bad; but not 'since 'Movie 43' have I been as angry, as frustrated and as disgusted at a film. It is a hideous pimple of a movie that needs to be squeezed so that all of the misogyny, wildly politically incorrect characters and black nature can erupt from it's cold exterior and we can all get on with our lives; not having to worry that something as ugly, as hateful and as vile as 'Pain & Gain' still exists in our once contented lives.

Mark Wahlberg plays Danny Lugo, a lunk headed bodybuilder who is much more obsessed with his body and his muscles than family and friends. He is constantly working out at the gym and trains other people to be just like him. However, while he has a body many of us would kill for, he is unhappy in life and feels that he has been cheated somewhere down the line. After attending a self - help seminar led by Ken Jeong, Lugo suddenly realises that to be a true and patriotic American,  he must earn millions and millions of dollars and have a big house. However, he doesn't have a job that will earn him that kind of money, so he proceeds to do the alternative; steal it. Enlisting the help of two other bodybuilders; the ultra religious Paul played by Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and the headstrong and impotent Adrian played by Anthony Mackie. The target they choose is a rich, supposed crook played by Tony Shaloub and after several fumbled kidnappings, the gang manage to take him and tie him up in an abandoned warehouse. Here, they begin to torture and mutilate the innocent man to get him to sign over all of his assets to the group of idiotic bodybuilders and after enduring more pain and suffering than any character has in cinema this year, Shaloub finally gives in and puts his signature along the dotted line. Now rich and powerful, Lugo and his friends begin to spend the money they have aquired with alomb on houses, girls, drugs and possessions. But as the money flutters away and the group finds themselves in the same situation they were in before the kidnapping, they resort to more torture, mayhem and eventually murder to get what they want.

Everyone who knows me knows that I hate everything that Michael Bay has ever done. Now, it would be easy to say that I just don't like action movies or I don't like science fiction movies but the truth is, I do, I really do. But I don't like them when they are done with such lack of attention, care or thought and to me, not one of Bay's movies has any qualities that I want to see in a cinema. I understand that many love his movies, the awful 'Transformers' trilogy has made nearly $3 billion dollars worldwide, with a fourth installment coming out next Summer. As far as the box office numbers go, Michael Bay is gold. Pure misogynistic, racist and vile gold; and he knows it. None of his movies have ever made a loss and thanks to the help of big names like Jerry Bruckheimer and Steven Spielberg, Bay is one of the most profitable directors ever. Why is this I keep asking myself. His movies certainly aren't entertaining; in fact I and many others find them intolerably dull, they aren't particularly groundbreaking in terms of narrative or special effects and they certainly do not provide any intellectual benefit at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with escapist fun and I for one for one am a big fan of big dumb blockbusters; but not when they are done with such a pernicious, mean spirited black heart. Michael Bay doesn't care about entertaining us. He cares about making money and that is all there is to it. Gone are the days of directors making a film purely for the love of cinema, instead we have a talentless hack who blows a quarter of a billion dollars to make a movie about robots hitting each other while Megan Fox provocatively poses over a motorbike. 

'Pain & Gain' is the first 'based on a true story' film that Bay has ever made and unfortunately, while it may be factually accurate, it is the worst thing Michael Bay's name has ever been attributed to; and I am including the god awful remake of 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' here! The problem lies in the fact that Bay has taken the true story of three guys who murdered and dismembered innocent people for their own gain in the mid '90's and has turned it into a knockabout, slapstick comedy. Yes, the hideous killing of perfectly harmless individuals is now being treated as a comedic situation and one that Michael Bay delights in showing us in graphic detail. Not only is this disrespectful to those killed by these monsters, but it is also highly insensitive to the families caught up in the chaos that took place less than 2 decades ago. Another big mistake that Bay has made is that he has made his central characters so bumbling, so dim and so stupid that he tries to force us to empathise with these murderers and root for them to get their own way. No. no, no, no, no, no. And once again, NO! It is clear from reading the stories of the atrocities that these men were homicidal, selfish human beings who deserve to hang for their hideous crimes, not the unlikely protagonists of a visceral action film that portrays these events in graphic, but supposedly comedic detail. To direct comedy, a director has to have a sense of humour and an understanding of how the genre basically works. Michael Bay has demonstrated with his 'Transformers' saga that he obviously doesn't possess a single comedic bone in his body and that his idea of a joke is a random expletive in the middle of sentence or a sudden, unexpected explosion of bloody violence.  All of the jokes' in 'Pain & Gain' are blatantly obvious and this only adds to the boredom created by the dreary screenplay and horrible characterizations. It could have been possible to show this story with a satirical edge or a parodic nature, but that is giving Bay for too much credit for even believing that he could portray that kind of wit or ambivalent slant on the alternative view of the American Dream that is on show.

I like Mark Wahlberg very much; in fact he was the best thing about Martin Scorsese's modern gangster epic 'The Departed' for which he should have won an Academy Award. Here, he does his best and it is clear that he is having fun with his role; but his character is written so horribly, so selfishly and so wrong headed-ly that is impossible to feel anything but hate towards him. As the main protagonist, he is meant to possess characteristics and idiosyncracies that are meant to make us warm to him, but instead I found myself repelling from him and wanting his sick game to end as soon as possible. I also like Dwayne Johnson a lot but once again, his character is so unlikable that it is impossible to gravitate towards him in any way. In fact, all of the characters in 'Pain & Gain' are so unbelievably hatable that watching the film becomes something of an endurance test. The dialogue throughout is terrible and while the acting is fine, it is really nothing special. 

All of the women in the movie are either there to be eye candy or form the butt of an extremely misogynistic gag. Throughout the film, we see dozens of ladies in bikini's, tight tops and some even naked for no particular reason and it is clear that Bay has put them in there for his own fetishistic desires. These characters serve absolutely no purpose to the story and only serve to cement the ideology that Michael Bay objectifies his female cast members and sees them as nothing more than window dressing for his putrid, hideous fantasies. There are what many would call 'uglier' women in the movie too but they only serve as the funny 'face revealed' gags; caricatured to the point of insult with braces and glasses. There is also a rampant strain of homophobia running through the movie that rears it's ugly head at the most inappropriate times. 

I really could go on for hours about 'Pain & Gain' and why it is one of the worst movies of the decade so far but my keyboard is starting to erupt fire and tempests due to the furious typing and waves of evil intended energy flowing from my eye sockets. So I will end on this; Danny Lugo and Adrian Dorbal are currently on death row and it will only be a matter of time before they are executed and those who committed these evil crimes are finally bought to justice. They deserve nothing less and am sure that throughout the world, many will agree with me when I say that death is the easy way out for these psychopaths. Michael Bay can do all he likes behind the camera to try and make us feel sympathy for them but simple human nature will always prevail. Always. Anyone who has anything to do with the pre - production, production, post - production, marketing or distribution of 'Pain & Gain' should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves and I hope that they soon come to realise that they have created an abomination to the motion picture world. No one will believe this, but I really wanted Michael Bay to prove me wrong and show that he has got a modicum of talent. I went into the auditorium with a completely open mind, hoping for the best. But instead, he has so solidly cemented my views that he is the worst director who has ever lived and at over 2 hours long, 'Pain & Gain' is the pinnacle of the skyscraper; the Empire State Building of all that is wrong with the movies.