Their American Dream is bigger than yours
After taking a brief hiatus from directing, Michael Bay steps out of the Transformers’ universe and into the world of body lifting and crime with Pain & Gain. Dwayne Johnson’s year has no signs of slowing down with the latest comedy/crime project being his third release for 2013, with another on the way in May. Alongside The Rock, Mark Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie round out the body building crew that perpetuate a slew of violent and quite often deadly offenses, in order to achieve their idea of the American dream. Ed Harris, Tony Shalhoub, Rebel Wilson and Ken Jeong fill out the rest of the main cast, formulating a strong diverse ensemble.
Pain & Gain is based on a series of kidnappings, tortures, and murders of victims by a group of body building criminals in 1999. The aforementioned events took place in Miami, Florida and received sensational coverage from Miami New Times. Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg) and Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) are two average bodybuilders at Miami’s “Sun Gym” working tirelessly just to get by. Sick of training self-righteous socialites, Daniel concocts a plan to extort money from his client Victor Kershaw, a successful yet morally bankrupt business mogul. After successfully extorting money from Kershaw with the assist from a convicted criminal Paul Doyle (Johnson), the gang attempts to dispose of him. When Kershaw survives the attack, he enlists a private investigator Ed Du Bois (Harris) to solve the case when Miami PD fails to deliver.
What Pain & Gain fails to accomplish is giving the audience a reason to care about any of the core characters. There is no strong moment of redemption for Wahlberg or Mackie’s character, there’s neither sympathy nor a motivation to care about their plight. Dwayne, the lesser evil, is an ex-convict and a coke addict with twisted sense of religious righteousness. While Dwayne and Mark have built a career on diverse roles, it was still quite the adjustment to watch them portray ruthless and inherently evil criminals. Tony Shalhoub’s Kershaw, is hardly a fan favorite as he is just as rotten as the perpetrators.
Although working on a much more restricted budget compared to the Transformers franchise, there’s no question that Michael Bay put his signature stamp of flashy camera angles and shiny scenes on this project. Through decapitation, heavy drug use and graphic sexual content, Bay and his cast find it hard to successfully deliver the comedy that’s thinly lined in Pain & Gain. Pain & Gain is a downright mess but with that being said it is entertaining and manages to keep the audience engaged through all the uncomfortable moments.
Ben Lester (bjams11)
