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View Full Version : Pain & Gain (Michael Bay)



eternity
04-29-2013, 08:49 AM
imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1980209/)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b1/Pain_%26_Gain_Teaser_Poster.jp g/220px-Pain_%26_Gain_Teaser_Poster.jp g

eternity
04-29-2013, 08:49 AM
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcdnmiaNYr1r3jdkc.png

wigwam
04-29-2013, 02:29 PM
:|

Ezee E
04-30-2013, 05:02 AM
This was kind of amazing.

Ezee E
04-30-2013, 05:23 AM
Scale back Michael Bay to one explosion and a true story, and out comes his best work that only Michael Bay could be capable of. Over the top on Americana for the 90's, it's quite the portrait of achieving the "American dream" without actually having to do the "real work." It easily seems like a movie that would be in an Indie theater if it weren't for Michael Bay behind the camera that uses his flash to travel from room-to-room as an argument happens in one room, and The Rock tries to impress a man's wife with unlimited pushups in another. The flashy cinematography is prevalent throughout, and seems fitting, as everything is glamorized for good reason.

The glamour and over-the-top style even seeps into the performances. The Rock pulls it off the best as the excon who is repenting for past sins, but gets taken away with money when it's in his hands. His comic timing is brilliant and convincing. Tony Shaloub, the victim of it all, is also great as the world's biggest jerk that no one wants to help. Ed Harris kind of phones it in as one of two people that actually do real work in this movie.

I've read about this movie back when Bay did the first Transformers. I believed in it then, and believe in it now. This would be Bay's best movie, and it may very well be one of the year's best.

The movie feels like a baby of Larry Clark's Bully and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, as directed by Michael Bay. Completely watchable.

Also of note, saw this at the Alamo Drafthouse, and they showed off some of Bay's earlier commercials. I didn't realize he directed one of my favorite commercials of all time. The Aaron Burr Got Milk commercial.

Henry Gale
04-30-2013, 07:55 AM
I came pretty close to liking this, but ultimately, it's Bay's and the script's comedic impulses that are so essential to fuelling the film that inevitably end up working so detrimentally against it once its true-story trajectory has to become as unsettling as it does. It's more stunningly messy as it goes along, but the key word there is "stunningly", because some of its sensibilities are so spot on throughout that it's a shame how awkward its nastier, real-life bits end up making the whole experience once they're paired with the film already in motion.

It makes sense to me that Bay didn't want the film to be an outright, brooding drama if this same material was intact since there are so many inherently ridiculous overarching pieces to the real story that he's simply not a nuanced enough director to get that sort of Coen Brothers-like balance right if he wanted to try to pull it off. But to me, there's the first half of the film, which I was almost entirely on-board with, and then there's the second half, which kept the same tone despite beginning to tell a more sinister story. It just becomes increasingly frustrating how tries to have it both ways in being so breezy, stylized and admittedly thrilling, even when showcasing repugnance, but not having the luxury to make the argument that it takes things to extremes to make a broad, satirical statement about how its characters' broken sense of The American Dream has brought them to think what they're doing is somehow owed to them in an artistically licensed, justified way, because most of it really did happen, and it's those bits of decidedly unfunny stuff that loudly linger more than any of the jokes.

There's still some of the insufferable "comedic" material Bay found every opportunity to pepper through his three Transformers and two Bad Boys movie (gags about erectile dysfunction, dwarves, and of course face-palm-inducing racial jokes, with some gay and overweight ones for good measure) that often feel thrown into scenes because he thought of them between takes and liked them enough to keep them in his final cut, not because they seem to stem from any of his characters or anything relevant plot-wise. My biggest issue isn't even that stuff being there (because sadly, I expected it from him) but how much of the movie, especially in that first half, manage to be genuinely hilarious in ways outside of that sort of juvenile, bad-taste stuff, and how it all eventually painting the protagonists too much like goofball underdog idiots, paving the way for everything to feel uncomfortable and muddled when they begin to do disgusting, criminal things. I don't want to get too far into spoilers for those that don't know the true story, but let's just say that the film's eventual course of events would've been a lot easier to swallow with what came before if it had been uprooted and the whole thing was designed as a black comedy really loosely inspired by this series of real crimes, instead of one that adheres so closely and brazenly to troubling fact despite the elastic, popcorn world it otherwise paints around it all.

E's surmising of it as a bizarrely dark It's Always Sunny episode if Larry Clark had somehow been involved is pretty damn apt, but imagine if that show suddenly had the gang torture, extort, steal from, kill and dismember a bunch of people (Pain & Gain major spoilers) only prefaced with a title card about it being taken direct from events from real articles, only repurposed to Dennis, Mac, Charlie and all the peripheral characters, with consistent reminders that it's true along the way.

Like any Michael Bay film, it's better the less you think about it. The only problem here is that Bay actually seems to have done a lot more thinking for the audience than ever before, and the results are an occasionally strong mish-mash of intriguing satire, endlessly capable direction steering questionable morals, with a lot of his usually ill-minded bad taste filling in the blanks, under very different circumstances to include them. Films like Spring Breakers or American Psycho could be seen as works with ultimately similar goals, only with broader portraits of their time periods told through the subverted idealism of specific American cultures around their characters (whether it's late '80s Wall Street bankers, millennial college party-ers, and here with similarly Florida-prone '90s bodybuilders), but with or without the heightened auras of those two films, their ultimate thesis' and structures stem so purely from the worldviews of the characters at the centres of them, that it doesn't really matter what the film thinks of them because by the end we so entirely see what that think of themselves as a general societal feeling for us to reflect on. Pain & Gain seems to genuinely shoot to achieve something like that, only deciding to bring its ideas to life though events that actually happened, and the dissolved divide of reality vs. poetic liberties feels overwhelmed by the former.

It's oddly a film only Michael Bay could make (especially weird to say since it's a side we rarely see from him), I just wish he didn't quite make it this way. His surface-level sensibilities are as strong as they've ever been (the guy's always been an excellent technical director), it's just a shame that there's the vapid, goofy, comedic vibe right out of Bad Boys II so completely at odds with something as unsettling and grisly as Savages or Alpha Dog. I mean, I don't like either of those, but at least Cassevetes Jr. with his own morbid true story, didn't misdirect its audience to feeling early on that whatever bad things would happen could fit into a Pumping Iron meets Horrible Bosses-like universe ("We can't kidnap him! He's not even a kid!" *rimshot*), or even exist in the comfy Oliver Stone world of disturbingly violent and clunkily told fiction like in Savages. Plus, neither put a sizable amount of time aside for dick jokes.

Sorry if it feels like I'm reiterating the same point over and over, but that's kind of what Bay does after a certain point here, but unlike him, I'm trying to think about the implications of latching so closely onto events involving real victims and repurposing that for tentpole entertainment. Sure it happens all the time, but usually not in ways where those responsible are arguably made to seem sympathetic at certain points. I get that the film changes the names of everyone but those criminally responsible for everything, but it also casts them as incredibly recognizable and likable leads in Wahlberg and Johnson, both hysterical and perfectly suited to their characters as the script dictates for them, arguably the strongest performances I've ever seen from either of them. It's supremely solid entertainment deterred by too much critical assessment for me. So maybe the more I eased up and gave into the former, the better I might've thought of it. But should I have?

**½ / C+

Henry Gale
05-05-2013, 04:40 PM
Can more people see this and discuss it? I'm still desperately trying to wrap my head around it.

(A hesitant recommendation of sorts.)

Ezee E
05-06-2013, 05:08 PM
Can more people see this and discuss it? I'm still desperately trying to wrap my head around it.

(A hesitant recommendation of sorts.)

Right? I figured a lot more would see this.

It has resonated well with me.

Dukefrukem
05-06-2013, 05:38 PM
I saw it. It's a big meh. I'd say it's close to Bay's best film... I'd still prefer to watch the Rock before this again.

Boner M
05-08-2013, 02:36 AM
This might have been OK if Michael Bay wasn't so terrible at comedy. Dwayne Johnson MVP, as ever.

Rowland
05-08-2013, 11:09 PM
Probably evil, but also likely to be the Rosetta stone of Bay's career, and as such it makes for a fascinating case of autocriticism stinging that much harder for being so slippery in the extent of its self-awareness, if any. For better and for worse, this is the real deal, a more genuine, excoriating, appalling, and bracingly heartfelt satire-cum-anthem to pop idiocy and the American Dream™ than Spring Breakers.

Derek
05-09-2013, 12:03 AM
This might have been OK if Michael Bay wasn't so terrible at comedy.

YES. First thing I said to my friend after the credits was that the only thing Bay is worse at than action scenes is comedy. Groanworthy, though obviously better than the comic bits in the Transformers movies.


Probably evil, but also likely to be the Rosetta stone of Bay's career, and as such it makes for a fascinating case of autocriticism stinging that much harder for being so slippery in its self-awareness. For better and for worse, this is the real deal, a more genuine, excoriating, appalling, and bracingly heartfelt satire-cum-anthem to pop idiocy and the American Dream™ than Spring Breakers.

Slippery in its self-awareness b/c it still manages to be dumb, sexist, etc. while looking down on these idiotic characters for being dumb, sexist, etc. It's watching a meathead director satirize meathead culture. I'll agree it's interesting b/c of that, but it hardly makes it a good film

Boner M
05-09-2013, 02:58 AM
Everything 'interesting' about it can be gleaned from the trailer. The film merely offers the opportunity to repeatedly re-acknowledge that the material is suited to Bay's sensibilities. With terrible comedy.

Also, what a missed opportunity at mid-90's period recreation; aside from the buzz of hearing "Gangster's Paradise".

Derek
05-09-2013, 03:01 AM
I
Everything 'interesting' about it can be gleaned from the trailer. The film merely offers the opportunity to repeatedly re-acknowledge that the material is suited to Bay's sensibilities. With terrible comedy.

I suppose by 'interesting', I only meant less mind-numbing than Transformers 2 or Pearl Harbor.

TGM
09-09-2013, 09:07 PM
Watched this last night. I've heard good things about it, but I was still really impressed by just how good it was. Quite possibly Michael Bay's best (though I might still like The Rock a bit better). The performances were great, and Rocky especially killed it with probably the best performance of his acting career to date.

Skitch
09-09-2013, 11:51 PM
I thought it was amusing. My gut says it should be shorter, but I wouldn't know what to cut, as I tee hee hee'd at pretty much all of it. Harmless.

Raiders
09-19-2013, 05:48 PM
I suppose by 'interesting', I only meant less mind-numbing than Transformers 2 or Pearl Harbor.

I don't know... I actually found this film to succeed at a new level of hatred for me. At least there, Bay clearly is getting caught up in his fever-dream jingoism and love of all things that go boom... I expected it. But with this film, it is so fucking smug with comedy that has no chance of being funny because all of it is based, as you say, on a meathead director baffingly finding it funny to make fun of meathead culture... and adding in some blatant homophobia that even now Bay apparently finds hilarious. I didn't even like Dwayne Johnson in this, and that is quite a feat. I only perservered so I could feel justified in my hatred.

This was just bad and maybe even moreso because it wasn't bad in a really ambitious way but bad in the way that all Bay films are, playing to his basest impulses and lack of any depth or caring about a single person he trots on screen except at cogs in his cinematic ejaculation of crisp images... only harder, because now he is actively trying to be funny.

Irish
09-19-2013, 06:23 PM
I thought it was amusing. My gut says it should be shorter, but I wouldn't know what to cut, as I tee hee hee'd at pretty much all of it. Harmless.

Tricky, because the movie is all over the place -- but I'd start with the massive amount of tedious voiceover at the beginning and the multiple point-of-views.

If this had been thirty or so minutes shorter, it would have been brilliant & a breath of fresh air coming from Bay. As it stands, it's just mildly amusing and more of a curiosity than anything else.

Skitch
09-19-2013, 06:33 PM
As it stands, it's just mildly amusing and more of a curiosity than anything else.

This is a good description, because the tone of the whole film is just so damn bizarre.

Irish
09-19-2013, 06:36 PM
This is a good description, because the tone of the whole film is just so damn bizarre.

:lol: Agreed. It's completely fucked up. But I got the feeling that had more to do with the nature of the "true story" than anything Bay had done behind the camera.

I went in really wanting to like this, and I've got a soft spot for some of the actors involved ... but I found it pretty tiring by the end.

Mal
12-27-2013, 05:38 AM
Todd Solondz should have made this story. But he didn't, so all were left with is tonally inept bullshit.

number8
05-15-2014, 03:35 PM
Tried watching this and turned it off 2/3 in. Just garbage. Proves yet again that the problem with Michael Bay movies is not that the stories are dumb and full of explosions like everyone always bags him about, but it's that the man just fundamentally does not know how to shoot and edit a narrative. It's just random coverage and dolly shots strung together like a duct-taped piece of shit.

I can't believe a bunch of critics were praising this when it came out. Do people hate Transformers that much that Bay can do some low-rent 90s Peter Berg shit and it'll look great in comparison?