Pain & Gain

How do you combine irony, distance, fun and shock? Don't ask Michael, he doesn’t know. The problem of Pain and Gain can be summed up in one sentence: for this type of film to work, it needs to be smarter than its characters. And it's not. The director has no distance, the escalating dementia of everything and everyone excuses the genre of black comedy and the complete imbalance of tone of the popular alibi that reality is "stranger than fiction". But it is not in this form. Everything that is strange and unsettling about this story was melted by Bay in a sweaty muscular goulash, all the dynamics of which lie in the constant movement of the camera and grotesque performances that do not have a shred of integrity in them (just like the entire script). How does one make it so that all the pain brings some gain, other than superficial tabloid entertainment? This equation is beyond Bay's capabilities. (07/31/2013)

If you take an hour of untethered action from Bad Boys II and replace it with an even larger portion of infantile entertainment aimed at gut reaction, so typical of Bay, this time presented as “nerds overflowing with clever plans". And although I would prefer to see this story in the hands of the Coen brothers, I can’t deny that in his own guilty pleasure way, Bay shows that he can also be, although not actually funny, at least entertaining. And this is in spite of its length and Marky Mark’s return to Calvin Klein underpants. (08/08/2013)

Bay in his best form. A twisted story about how a bunch of bodybuilders decided to take a path to riches and glory. And God heard their pleads. Pain and Gain are down to earth Bad Boys 2, where reality (the plot is based on a true story) is often more incredible than even the worst Hollywood kitsch. Uncle Mike still shoots popcorn entertainment, this time cheaper, but, well… more entertaining. Mockery of the American dream was never this cruel and satirical. The actors handled their characters excellently, the Rock rules in his role of a dumb religious junkie (it’s a shame that we didn’t see him ride on that skateboard) and Marky Mark as a slick “man with a plan" of the gang definitely gets him some recognition. Ed Harris “merely" enjoys his role of a detective past his prime. The multi-angled storytelling, at some moments giving the viewer insight into the world behind the main characters’ brain curtains, all the way into their muddled thought processes, offers an opportunity to sympathize with each of them, because all of them have valid and very justifiable reason for their actions (hands on the grill). (08/08/2013)

In full John Waters mode, Michael Bay presents a perversely excessive vision of the sick nature of the American dream. Based on actual events, the screenplay could have been created as a moralising drama or a bit of Coen-esque absurdity, but thanks to Bay and his excessive visual style, it takes on a frantically boisterous form, which also adds a deranged meta level to the whole project. No one else would add to a story from the 1990s the necessary mid-’90s impropriety in maximally attractive modern attire. (11/17/2020)

A similarly absurd spectacle to the Coen brothers' legendary Fargo. It's so bizarre, cynical and aptly ironic, so politically incorrect, so dehumanisingly testoste-packed, that in a perverse sort of way it's impossible not to like it. Moreover, it brutally kicks the ass of the notorious idea of the American dream of a land of unlimited possibilities, where everything can be achieved with diligence and ambition. The tragicomic figures with a dumbbell and a dollar sign for a brain, accurately portrayed by Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, were a delight to watch. I’ve never been and I am not a fan of Michael Bay, he’s never known, and still doesn't know, moderation in his films, but here he actually turned this unfortunate trait into something unexpected: his best film. (08/10/2013)