Is it possible to almost hate and love a movie at the same
time? Apparently it is because when I came home from “Pain and Gain”, I felt
altogether entertained, disgusted, shocked, and offended. But I definitely got
my money’s worth.
Like
many other movie goers, I was surprised to hear—after releasing a succession of
massively over-budgeted blockbusters like “Pearl Harbor”, “Armageddon”,
and “Transformers”—that director Michael Bay was going to release a
relatively lower budget crime-comedy that’s R rated and not necessarily aiming
for the widest possible audience. Having been burned in the past by his
particular brand of assaultive, arrogant, cash-grabbing nonsense, Bay’s hyper-edited,
pixie-sticks-and-gun-powder aesthetic has left me cautious of whatever else he
might inflict. However, I am comfortable enough in my tastes to admit that he
has entertained me before (“The Rock”) and it looked like this new movie
was exactly the kind of enema he needed after squandering the last decade with
soulless giant robot pictures.
Supposedly
based on a 1995 true story, “Pain and Gain” stars Mark Wahlberg as a Daniel
Lugo, an ambitious Miami bodybuilder, who after getting fed up with his
average life, decides to bring in his two muscleheaded friends (Dwayne Johnson,
and Anthony Mackie) to kidnap and extort a well-to-do deli franchise owner (Monk’s
Tony Shalhoub). When the plan goes horribly
wrong and a police investigation gives way, the plot then begins to splinter into
progressively darker, aggressive, and morbidly twisted avenues—including
cocaine, Christianity, plastic surgery, and dismemberment.
There
has always been an underlying nastiness in much of Michael Bay’s previous
work. Often his movies seem to breezily
embrace out of touch racial stereotypes, unsettling homophobia, and overt misogyny.
Whereas before this sneering tone was always in the undercurrent of his
all-ages fare, in this hard-R rated crime caper, it becomes set and center of
the moral stage in which the characters inhabit. The hate and cynicism of this
movie burns through every scene, with every female shot and dressed to look like
a stripper, unfunny fat-shaming, startling anti-Semitism, and reoccurring
gay-bashing—curiously juxtaposed with (unintentional?) homoerotic imagery. All
of this is inexcusable…But…
There
is something refreshingly pure and unfiltered about the deliberate offensive
nature of this movie. Because this story is told through the revolving voice
overs of its unsympathetic and unreliable narrators, Bay’s usual distasteful behavior
twists into a kind of mirror for him to look and reflect on his past attitudes
and what they are really about. I can’t say that any of those contradictions are
ever resolved and the movie is still thematically suspect at best, but it makes
for an honest and interesting self-realized, almost-satire that deserves to be
closely observed by both its director and the audience.
Logistically
the narrative suffers a bit from over-stylization and incomprehensible editing.
The constant change-over between interior monologues get distracting, the
timeline is rushed in places where the story would serve to simmer and refocus,
and the character’s motivations seem more dictated by structural shifts in the
plot and the comedic beats that need to be hit. Without a doubt, this movie is
a mess. However, it’s the imperfections and sloppiness of “Pain and Gain” that
kind of gives it the scrappy personality I admire. Dwayne Johnson and Wahlberg
both give very charismatic performances and the whole things moves with a lot
of primitive energy.
With a
sense of raggedy punk-rock expression, Bay throws everything and the kitchen
sink at the wall and when something doesn’t stick, he nails it in place. Though
I can’t say with total honestly that I liked everything in “Pain and Gain” I
can say that for the first time ever this filmmaker has finally made something from
his rotten heart.
Grade: C
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/May-2013
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