Just over a week after the damp squib that was The Island, Michael Bay was approached by Steven Spielberg to direct Transformers. For Spielberg, the project was a passion of his. He was a fan of the original comics and wanted to make a film about “a boy and his car”. Bay initially turned it down, classing it as a “stupid toy movie”, but reluctantly joined so he could work with such an esteemed director. Adding a more military theme to lessen the “too kiddie” vibes and “more doo-dads and stuff on the robots, more car parts” to make the characters look realistic, Transformers was released in 2007 and became the highest grossing non-sequel of the year. Breaking records beyond any of their expectations, Bay and the studios would go on to create four sequels (not including spin-offs), making Transformers one of the biggest film franchises of all time. Snuck in between the third and fourth features of the series, Bay takes a break from massive robots to direct massive sweaty men instead, with his tenth outing Pain & Gain.
Based upon a true story, Pain and Gain is a 2013 crime caper starring Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. Tired of being a personal trainer and pushing everyone around him to succeed instead of himself, Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg) devises a plan to get rich quickly. Enlisting fellow disillusioned weightlifters Adrian Doorbal (Mackie) and Paul Doyle (Johnson), they kidnap one of Lugo’s wealthiest clients Victor Kershaw (played by Tony Shaloub, based on Marc Schiller) and extort him for all of his assets. Where they excel in strength, they lack in brains, with past mistakes and bad habits coming back to haunt them. Directing with his lowest budget since his debut film Bad Boys (a measly 20 million dollars, resulting in significant pay cuts for the lead roles), Pain & Gain represents the biggest departure from Bay’s formula in his career so far.
It’s this change that piqued my interest prior to viewing. From a word of mouth perspective, Pain & Gain has been described as the one “good” modern Bay film, with the critics agreeing (50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 9% higher than his average). The picture starts strongly, providing depth and exposition to Lugo which normally feels tacked on out of necessity. Stylistically, the vibrant Miami setting backs up the neon tans and, all of sudden, I am believing what I see on-screen. Nevertheless, it still falls into the traps of Bay’s previous favourite traits, such as taking a third of the movie to introduce the story and bleeding one interesting idea bone dry. A 5 minute montage with Wahlberg narrating his backstory works, but it’s then extended to Mackie and Johnson, before stretching to side characters and internal monologues throughout. I was no longer being shown a story, just told one. Somehow, Bay has managed to squeeze too much dialogue in without improving the overall story before we get into the mandatory explosions and car chases.
The other key element to Pain & Gain is the comedy. Alone, I believe the absurd story coupled with the unstable characters is enough to be funny. In the right hands, the subtext of greed, corruption and capitalism add depth to the inherent darkness of torturing someone over money. Whilst Bay is able to contribute the over-the-top nature from his previous films, he is unable to fully capitalise on the underlying themes as he himself is a product of the system. They try to make the main characters sympathetic but they end up as just another offensive joke among the constant homophobic, misogynistic and sex-driven quips taken from Bad Boys almost 20 years earlier. Whilst the potential and promise was here for Bay to try and be creatively different, he is unable to get out from his own shadow, directing more pain than gain.