Pain and Gain

Oh, Michael Bay…I should’ve known. I should not have trusted the kinetic energy of the trailers for Pain and Gain. I should not have trusted the casting of two of my generation’s best action stars and some inspiring choices for small character roles. I should not have trusted the unique, disturbing and true source material that was begging for a big screen adaptation. But I did. I gave in to the hype. Michael Bay is back I thought! He’s left the noisy mess of Transformers behind to take on a smaller adaptation just dripping with subtext, begging for a director like Bay to inject his unique brand of Mountain Dew-fueled energy. How wrong I was.

I won’t use this review as a referendum on Bay’s career but his past will certainly inform the following. Bay’s films always make for a great trailer but he directs like a 12-year old who just found his Dad’s Playboy stash for the first time.

Everything in Pain and Gain is delivered with punishing excess, never stopping for longer than a couple minutes to let the material breath. And I was EXCITED for this. I thought that excess could be harnessed for a much smaller story, but Bay can’t help himself.

P&G begins promisingly. Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is doing sit ups on top of a building. His inner-monologue offers us a clear point of view as he states that, “He’s a Doer” and “America is the buffest country in the world.” Mr. Lugo is not a bright man, but he’s clearly driven by materialistic pleasures. His pump is interrupted by mobs of swat teams descending on his position. The monologue and Bay’s borderline psychotic editing style works well here as we’re shown a delusional man hell bent on his skewed view of the American dream.

The film flashes back as Lugo is run over by a police car to how this all went down. He”s a personal trainer at Sun Gym in Miami circa 1995. He’s fed up with the dead end job. The view from his gym is a good one but he envy’s his richer clients. He spends the day spotting sweaty old men, shyly hitting on beautiful porn stars and lifting weights with his best friend Adrian (Anthony Mackie.) At his wit’s end Lugo decides to attend a get rich quick seminar run by an obnoxious TV salesman played, of course, by Kim Jeong. Lugo is inspired by the salesman’s words but instead of turning them into a business plan he decides the better way to make his fortune will be to kidnap, torture and extort one of his wealthy clients (played with disgusting verve by Tony Shalhoub.)

To pull this off he and Adrian recruit a new employee at the gym named Paul (The Rock.) Paul is born-again after being recently released from prison. He’s been sober for a year…but he also may be slightly unhinged. The plan Lugo hatches is simple: kidnap his client, torture him into signing all of his wealth over and live the good life. The only problem…these guys are idiots.

After the kidnapping the film takes a decidedly dark turn (which I won’t spoil if justin-bieber-news.info performs March 19, 2010 in London, England. you want to endure it.) The problem is one of simple tone. Bay continues the story with a 3-stooges like lightness that becomes increasingly grating as the film stumbles towards the 2-hour mark. The tone works decently well establishing these buffoons and even leads to a few deserved laughs. But Bay can’t stop. I understand the kind of films he makes but he’s clearly trying his hand at a Coen Bros film…and he most certainly is not the Coen Bros.

Pain and Gain’s most egregious missteps are most certainly its stabs at juvenile humor. I’m no prude but this movie bleeds homophobia, sexism and plenty of good ol’ fashion racism. Sexy naked women with fake breasts? CHECK. Fat chick jokes? CHECK. Copious amounts of gay slurs for no reason? CHECK. Little Asian man and a wise-cracking black sidekick? CHECK. People who enjoyed this movie point at these elements as a projection of Lugo’s world view, the excess he so craves and the peons he looks down upon. But this is Bay’s M.O. All his films seem to be written with the purpose of perpetuating the world view of a 14-year old boy that walks around the mall for fun.

And keep in mind, I went into this film with relatively high expectations. Bay, for his many terrifying faults as a humanoid, can direct the crap out of an action scene. By the time the action arrived in P&G I didn”t care. As I watched I could see Bay’s vision: the excess of the 90’s were personified by Miami and a true story existed centering on 3-down on their luck bodybuilders who chased the American dream in the exact opposite way a normal minded person would. The satire practically writes itself. But Bay’s indulgent nature always creeps to the surface. By the end I had the sinking feeling that he may not just sympathize but actually like these three guys. Ugh.

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