Full disclosure, I thought Pain & Gain was going to be a comedy or, at the very least, peppered with humor more often than not. It isn’t. It’s a tragedy. The focus is on dumb people doing dumb things and it’s largely impossible to enjoy because it’s based on a true story of people who kidnapped, tortured, robbed and murdered people told through the glossy, oversaturated lens of Michael Bay. While I’ve never been one to participate in “Bay bashing”, if there was ever an example of the man not understanding drama this is it.
Loaded with all the faux machismo, homophobia, misogyny, racism and flag-waving we’ve come to expect from Bay, Pain & Gain is presented in his traditional slick and glossy fashion, which would seem to suggest we’re in for a rip-roaring good time with a trio of bonehead body builders looking for a quick buck. And, at the very least, I can tell you the last part of that run-on sentence is true.
At the head of the snake is Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), a knucklehead whose motto is, “I believe in fitness,” which is amusing the first time, but not the fifth.
Daniel, despite his misconception of the American Dream, is a motivated personal trainer and takes his work seriously. He’s not a bad guy, just a bit slow on the uptake. Nothing wrong with that. As long as he’s not hurting anyone what’s it matter? He isn’t, however, happy with his financial position in life.
Working at Sun Gym in Miami, Daniel’s co-worker Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) looks up to him like he’s a god in some ways, willing to follow him down whatever path. So, when Daniel comes up with a scheme to kidnap and rob one of his rich and insulting clients (Tony Shalhoub), Adrian goes along even though he has his doubts.
Rounding out this triangle of incompetence is Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson). Paul is an ex-convict that found Jesus and sobriety in prison and is just looking to go down the right path, though Daniel finds a way to tap into his violent and habitual tendencies and things get moving.
Daniel, Adrian and Paul ultimately execute their plan, start buying property, cars and cocaine and as you would expect from any Michael Bay film, strippers get involved. Now I’m not saying strippers that believed Daniel was a CIA agent weren’t actually involved in this story, but it’s just all presented in such a matter-of-fact way that, Yeah, okay, this happened and people got hurt. You want me to take enjoyment out of that?
There is no one to root for in this film. Even the “good” guy’s are assholes. What’s the point?
There are enough real life stories brought to life on film that make you feel the pain of the victims. While a film based on a tragic real story can be consumed as entertainment, there must still be some inkling of humanity within that story for an audience to connect. There’s a reason I don’t watch shows like “The Real World” and “Jersey Shore”, the people on these shows are idiots and the people producing the shows lack the humanity to realize they are merely profiting off weak individuals. It depresses me to watch and the same is true with Pain & Gain.
Each frame comes and goes without much effect. Wahlberg struts around in his tank-top and LA Gear kicks (you know the ones, the ’90s Jordan knock-offs) and drops some funny one-liners where screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely let loose a little. But it seems working in safe territory such as the Narnia trilogy and Marvel’s Captain America films left Markus and McFeely a little lacking when it came to extending their imaginations and sense of entertainment while adapting Pete Collins’ three-part newspaper articles.
Markus and McFeely certainly had to fill in the blanks between the Sun Gym Gang’s escapades, but the attempted comedic beats within those blanks fall flat considering the gruesome nature of the story being told. Picture Dwayne Johnson coked out of his skull, barbecuing four severed hands to remove the fingerprints while Wahlberg and Mackie return from Home Depot with the supplies to give the owners of those hands an acid bath.
It’s an unbelievable scenario. So unbelievable in fact Bay slides in some text that reads, “This is still a true story.” At that point a few people in my audience laughed, but I get the feeling the rest of the audience was with me, a bit sick to our stomachs, wondering if Bay really intended us to laugh and take any kind of satisfaction out of what we were witnessing. Because I couldn’t.
Then again, perhaps that’s the point. Did Bay sabotage his own film to the extent he stripped it of any soul, presented a trio of pumped up morons and placed them in front of the American flag as a not-so-subtle dig at the whole of American society? If so, okay, but that doesn’t make the movie any better. Being in on the joke doesn’t make it funny, in this case it’s just tragic.
