REVIEW

Pain & Gain

Pain & Gain 78 Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Tony Shalhoub, Anthony Mackie, Rebel Wilson, Ed Harris, Michael Rispoli Director: Michael Bay Rating: R, for bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language throughout and drug use Running time: 130 minutes

In order to consider Michael Bay a controversial filmmaker, there would have to be enough of a population out there that doesn’t believe him to be a calculating opportunist - a bombastic hack who has consistently shot for the lowest common denominator, and produced little but a steady stream of adolescent, summertime drivel and driven it down our throats like cough syrup - to argue otherwise. In such risible fare as The Rock, Pearl Harbor and a seemingly endless procession of Transformers movies, Bay has proved to be critical kryptonite, while still mining serious Hollywood gold for the studios that employ him. In short, he’s laughing all the way to the Brinks truck, but with his new film, he appears to be trying to let us in on the joke.

Pain & Gain, a truth-based, sardonic kidnapping-gone-wrong tale set in Miami, isn’t really proof that Bay has expanded his limited-but-lucrative range. It’s more that, with this utterly preposterous but largely true story of blood,sweat and extortion, he has found a fittingly brash, darkly humored vehicle for his already established brand of big stars, big crashes and lots of empty-headed action along the way.

The story begins in Miami Beach, where Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), a slick body-builder recently out of prison for fraud, gets a gig as a trainer at a local muscle gym. There, he works his way up the ladder and quickly gets in position to make his own hires. He brings in Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), another muscle-head so hopped up on juice he’s virtually impotent, and the hulking Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), also an ex-con, who discovered sobriety and Jesus in the joint.

Under Lugo’s audacious command, the trio sets about concocting a kidnapping scheme, wherein they snatch an obnoxious, rich businessman, Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), and force him to sign away all his money and property to them. It takes a few weeks of torture before Kershaw finally capitulates, and once they’ve gotten him to sign over all his property and savings, they decide they need to kill him. They fill him up with booze and pills and attempt to stage a car accident. Only Kershaw leaps out at the last second. Then, they run him over a couple of times and peel out, only later to find Kershaw again survived.

Bitter and furious at the police’s inept handling of his case, Kershaw calls in Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris), a private investigator with a sterling reputation, to track down his assailants.

Bay shoots the film like it’s a Friday night carnival, all bright colors, whooshing edits, flim-flam camera angles, super slo-mo, and freeze frames, with constant voiceovers from the principals to keep the hint of veracity in play (at one point, during a particularly unbelievable section, Bay gleefully stops the action to remind us the film is “still” based on a true story). Because of the gang’s penchant for fast cars and high living, he also gets to fill his frame with his standard Lamborghinis, strippers and lots of cocaine. It’s a bit as if Oliver Stone was given a set at the Laugh Factory.

The actors’ performances range from half-baked to nearly completely over the top, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

So why does the whole thing still feel so mean-spirited? For one thing, it’s tricky to play this story - one of the most notorious incidents in Dade County history - as a black comedy when actual people actually died. The film also has an edge of sadism to it. Bay makes sure never to miss a bloody point, be it a severed toe or chopped hand, and, though the film begs us otherwise, the appropriation of ’90s-era pop, does little to distance these characters from the heinous crimes they’ve committed. These are truly awful people whom we’re meant to find endearingly amusing.

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely also repeatedly stuff teen-pleasing bits about poor body hair maintenance and the general unsavoriness of fat people in, in an attempt to further entice us. If this is indeed a passport into Bay’s comedic world, we’ll just have to go ahead and revoke our own Visa.

MovieStyle, Pages 27 on 04/26/2013

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