Classic Review: Pain and Gain (2013)

In a break between the third and fourth Transformers movies, Michael Bay finally did what he’d been wanting to do for a while: make his version of a Coen brothers film, focusing on wacky characters getting into all sorts of bizarre hijinks. And this film about a trio of idiot bodybuilders who make all the wrong decisions sounds like it’s right up their alley. Just imagine the story of the Sun Gym gang told in the style of Fargo. That’s essentially what director Michael Bay does, but watching Pain and Gain, one can clearly see a difference between him and the Coens, particularly in how they each view their characters, and the world at large.

Pain and Gain is inspired by true life events that happened between 1994 and 1995, and focuses on bodybuilders Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg), Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Johnson), as they form a get-rich-quick scheme that involves kidnapping rich people, killing them, and taking their belongings. With their first victim, Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), things seem to go over smoothly, but shortly after he is discovered to have survived the attack, things start unraveling for the Sun Gym gang as they fumble every opportunity to save face in a particularly gruesome manner.

As mentioned, Bay conceived Pain and Gain as a smaller film that he’d make in between the Transformers sequels, but even though the film cost “only” $26 million to make, Bay, naturally being Bay, made it look like it cost at least $60 million. Everything looks expensive and overheated, as Bay brings his usual brand of nihilism to the nth degree, amplifying his style to create a cynical yet somehow deranged statement on how the American Dream is nothing but a scam. Everyone and everything in this movie is corrupt, from the sleazy Florida locations to all the characters, with most of them flagrantly corrupt, dimwitted, out of their depths, or a combination of the three. There is nothing subtle about these proceedings, and that is precisely the point. Truly, the get-rich-quick scheme is as quick as the title suggests, at least in regards to how long it lasts before our trio screws it all up.

Beyond the aesthetic differences, it’s clear what sets Bay apart from the Coens. The latter have empathy for their characters, while the former is a nihilist who has no empathy for no one. He has an overwhelming level of hatred for everyone in the film, from the stupid, monstrous bodybuilders, to the innocent man they kidnap and torture, to their stripper girlfriends, and even just the basic average American. The oversaturated teal and orange color grading of Bay’s work is amped up to a sickly degree, like some radiated feverish Floridian fever dream you desperately want to escape from. Everything from the production design, to the camera angles, to the sound design, makes it all feel unreal. Bay and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely spew contempt for the entire ordeal, gleefully cackling at the rise-and-fall, but especially the fall, of these stupid monstrous people and their abominable egos.

Wahlberg feels uniquely suited to be playing these abhorrent, hot tempered and idiotic characters; he perfectly nails the smug, false charisma of Lugo, whose every idea seems sound on paper but when you scratch beneath the surface is utterly inane. Meanwhile, Johnson is just as great as the complete wreck that was Doyle. Mackie as Adrian Doorbal serves as the “most grounded” of the three, but that doesn’t say a lot. As much as he may seem more stable than the other two, he’s after the same insidious, unattainable American Dream. In an era where greedy American corporations are jacking up inflation, this freakish trip seems way too prescient.

If nothing else, Pain and Gain is a pure expression of hatred for the world, embodied by the idiotic monstrous trio at the center of this crazy, nightmarish story.

still courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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Gabe Guarin

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