Pain & Gain | Little White Lies

Pain & Gain

29 Aug 2013 / Released: 30 Aug 2013

Words by Adam Nayman

Directed by Michael Bay

Starring Anthony Mackie, Dwayne Johnson, and Mark Wahlberg

Two men in a gym, one adjusting the other's head gear.
Two men in a gym, one adjusting the other's head gear.
3

Anticipation.

Michael Bay puts down the toys and picks up a dumbbell.

2

Enjoyment.

A bowdlerised and obnoxious vision of American indie filmmaking.

2

In Retrospect.

Not without the occasional aesthetic charm, but mostly as loud, brash and air-headed as its protagonists.

Feel the pump! Michael Bay’s mus­cle-bound satire is Bad Boys on roids. And that’s not a good thing.

It’s bad prac­tice in body­build­ing to try to lift a heavy weight with­out get­ting in a few sets of lighter rep­e­ti­tions for prepa­ra­tion. And so it goes for film­mak­ing as well. With the flashy fact-based com­e­dy Pain & Gain, Michael Bay attempts to flex his satir­i­cal mus­cles for the first time in his career. But after spend­ing 20 years (and three Trans­form­ers movies) let­ting his intel­li­gence atro­phy into a thin, stringy mass, the direc­tor fails to get a firm grip on the mate­r­i­al, and ends up drop­ping the (med­i­cine) ball square­ly on his own foot.

I believe in fit­ness,” says Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), a South Beach per­son­al train­er whose heroes are self-made men like Scar­face and John­ny Wu (Ken Jeong), a self-help guru who divides the world into doers” and don’ters”. Daniel des­per­ate­ly wants to be the for­mer, and dis­plays just enough savvy as a gym admin­is­tra­tor to spike his club’s mem­ber­ship sales and get a small taste of the good life. He wants a big­ger bite, how­ev­er, and decides (in the death­less words of his director’s good bud­dy Steven Tyler) to eat the rich.” More specif­i­cal­ly: Vic­tor Ker­shaw (Tony Shal­houb), a half-Jew­ish, half-Columbian and whol­ly obnox­ious busi­ness­man whose osten­ta­tious flaunt­ing of his wealth is the equiv­a­lent of ring­ing a din­ner bell in Daniel’s chis­elled face.

We’re told before Pain & Gain starts that it is unfor­tu­nate­ly” based on true sto­ry, and the sheer unlike­li­hood of Daniel’s plot to rob Ker­shaw, which involves get­ting two meat-head­ed pals (gym rats played by Antho­ny Mack­ie and Dwayne John­son) to dress up in Hal­loween cos­tumes and taser their tar­get into uncon­scious­ness before kid­nap­ping him, has a com­pul­sive, stranger-than-fic­tion fas­ci­na­tion to it. The bat­tle of wills between the hare­brained trio and their apoplec­tic hostage is at its fun­ni­est when Kershaw’s teary indig­nance bounces off of the impen­e­tra­ble naïveté of Johnson’s Paul Doyle, a brawny, born-again sim­ple­ton who stops just short of ask­ing his pals to tell him about the rabbits.

John­son is a capa­ble com­ic actor who knows how to play up (and against) his pro wrestler’s physique, and he stylis­es him­self here into a bul­bous, ambu­la­to­ry metaphor — a wannabe gen­tle giant who tries to con­trol his appetites through reli­gious dog­ma and ends up bing­ing on sex, drugs and all the rest of it. Daniel and co even­tu­al­ly man­age to extri­cate Kershaw’s mon­ey from his var­i­ous high-inter­est accounts and pro­ceed to liv­ing high on the hog, which cues Bay to start show­ing off his own largesse: around the mid­way point, Pain & Gain turns into an extend­ed R‑rated music video in which the film­mak­er joins his char­ac­ters in lit­er­al­ly throw­ing mon­ey around. But where a great film­mak­er like Paul Ver­ho­even is often able to indulge and crit­i­cise his sleazy sub­ject mat­ter in the same pant­i­ng breath, Bay’s blinged-out imagery is bland­ly triumphal.

Pride comes before a fall, of course, and Pain & Gain doesn’t skimp on the gory and humil­i­at­ing details of its char­ac­ters’ inevitable descent into over­spend­ing, infight­ing and worse (peo­ple are killed, bod­ies are dis­posed of and appendages are bar­be­cued). The third act of Pain & Gain is a dif­fer­ent kind of overkill, deploy­ing a smirk­ing moral­ism to bal­ance out the ram­pant indul­gence of what’s come before. Rather than estab­lish­ing equi­lib­ri­um, how­ev­er, this tac­tic sug­gests noth­ing so much as a dorm-room lummox’s attempt to get real with some under­grad­u­ate philosophis­er (pic­ture Rodin’s The Thinker’ in a mus­cle shirt with a back­wards base­ball cap). Crime doesn’t pay, says Pain & Gain, and while that same mantra was good enough for Edwin S Porter and Mar­tin Scors­ese (and about a mil­lion oth­er film­mak­ers in between), the ser­mon is a lit­tle rich com­ing from a direc­tor who has become very, very rich from pum­melling audi­ences into weary submission.

If Pain & Gain had been bril­liant­ly made, its shal­low­ness might be less appar­ent. With the excep­tion of a few won­der­ful shots — a push-in on Daniel brood­ing in a swim­ming pool, his body’s size scar­i­ly dis­tort­ed beneath the water line — it doesn’t give the vul­gar auteurists much to work with. Ben Seresin’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy sears and melts like the inside of a tan­ning booth, but Bay’s mon­tage is staid and pre­dictable: his attempt at an all-out sen­so­ry assault has noth­ing on those Juve­na­lian delin­quents Neveldine/​Taylor, who nev­er met a nar­ra­tive con­ven­tion they couldn’t mug for its lunch money.

Pain & Gain is actu­al­ly rather straight­for­ward in sto­ry­telling terms, even­tu­al­ly sub­mit­ting to the form of a true-crime pro­ce­dur­al, where are they now?’ title cards and all. Bay’s first movie took its title from the theme song from US real­i­ty TV show Cops. Today this Bad Boy’s bid for seri­ous-movie cred achieves approx­i­mate­ly the same lev­el of enter­tain­ment val­ue as a Fox real­i­ty show.

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