Pain and Gain (Michael Bay, 2013)

[wigwam]

Pain & Gain is top of the line, primo craftsmanship (albeit derivative of Tony Scott as Bad Boys and pretty much all of Bay's stuff is, but "steal from the best" as they say) and the sheen and clarity of the colors popping and the dutchangles locking aren't just eye candy but visual crackrock and the editing is both breakneck and nano-precise in ways that few movies (successfully) are. The humor, characterwork and performances are hilarious and intoxicating and career-bests for most involved (not that there's much competition in certain cases, but Whalberg's career-making intensity from Fear and career-solidifying humor from later works are synthesized here to an awe-inspiring degree). There is a shot where The Rock is in a strip club, staring stonefaced in a non-reaction to something his character doesn't understand, and the staccato lights and their oscillating colors ricocheting off his bald head is some of the finest cinema pur since ...well To the Wonder the other night, or Spring Breakers weeks ago (I actually prefer this club scene to those of Spring Breakers who were sorta sub-Hype Williams to me), and while in reference/association mode I should also own up to feeling echos of GoodFellas, Boogie Nights and Badlands at different points in the 2nd half of the movie (when the cocaine and high-living get going; naturally my favorite part of the film).

The reality of the source material fluctuates in relevance and believability countless times throughout the movie, and the coda showing real pictures of the individuals did import some gravitas to what had only been levity or entertaining suspense, but even without such a device, the choices and scope Bay works with here are so impressive, effective and admirable, on their own but especially in context with his past "sins" if you will (and you will): the best moment for me was a climactic moment articulating the realness of the situation with a single drop of blood bouncing onto an apron, a moment so thrilling, gutpunching, darkly hilarious and just plain cool in ways that all the Decepticons punching all the CGIscrapers in all the Digiopolises never ever were, could or will be.

[knives]

I've been interested in the film for awhile (and the choice to make it a Coen's ripoff seems like the only logical one), but given certain of Bay's tendencies I'vebeen worried about how he deals with the evil of what these guy's did. I'm not necessarily asking if he handled it with sensitivity, but is there any of that Fargo depth present?

[flyonthewall2983]

I loved it. I've really just seen The Rock and Armageddon and bits and pieces of other stuff too, but this to me is far and away his best. It's drenched in the things that have been his calling cards, but replacing firepower and CGI robots with character depth and story. wigwam hits on it all, but it's very funny too. It's a bit of a 180 from the "humor" of the Bruckheimer films, which felt a bit stifling compared to the rest of it.

[knives]

Pain and Gain is easily Bay's career best and not even just in the very fun way that previous 'record' holder was. This is a very snappy well crafted piece of work that was surprisingly genius. I suspect this unexpected intelligence is in part a result of Bay ignoring everything outside of his world. The film takes a very conservative view, but what makes it palpable without asterisks in the way John Milius tends to be is that it's sights are also against conservatism which makes a fascinating series of splits that horrifically culminates with the second kidnapping incident. Naturally Ed Harris' PI is the emblem of good conservative with Bay coming from a hard working professional life with wife and even cherry pie. On the other end surprisingly is the idiot trio who largely appear as a perverse horror mirror to the good. Every other character falls in between. This occasionally leads to weird things such as Shalhoub's moment of catharsis which is also the most fictionalized moment of the movie.

The film is also really interesting on that note as it's final act of fictionalization stands in stark contrast to Argo's similar pile of lies. Part of what makes Bay's fictions more acceptable, at least to me, is in two parts. Firstly the Bay style with the bonus of weird meta-textual gags heightens the movie to where things seem oddly academic with Bay joking about what is true and what is made up. It gets to a point where the horrors stand so in contrast to the tone of the picture that Bay stops the momentum to highlight how this is true to the original article which only works to confuse the tone more fully. The second reason is almost against the Bay style completely, but Bay's fictionalization does not sensationalize to excite in the the way that Affleck so poorly did. Instead it is another tactic to confuse the emotional sense of the film as it comes to and through a character who's primary characterization is as an asshole who is told straight to his face that he is the worst by Harris. Bay does a little bit of softening to him in these final moments (both fictionalized) and leaves out the original story's big twist, but the characterization is so hard against him everywhere else that it has only an affect for thought rather than emotion for me. I know Bay will always be a hard sale on this site, but I really hope everyone gives this film just one shot.

[flyonthewall2983]

I know Bay will always be a hard sale on this site, but I really hope everyone gives this film just one shot.

Agreed. The negative reviews I have read are from people pretty convinced he can only do bad work. They can't see the forest from the trees. It's a smart story about stupid decisions made by men equal in proportion to that.

And I'll just come out and say that I would love to see Criterion pick this up.

[domino harvey]

I'm tempted to invoke the Mean Girls meme and suggest others stop trying to make this movie happen! While I was never bored, this struck me as little more than alternately a bad Coens ripoff and, more prominently in the third act, yet another in the long line of post-Tarantino violence comedies which peaked around the time this film was allegedly set (though why set the film in 1995 and then do absolutely nothing with that? This film plays so fast and loose with the true events at the heart of it that the setting is not part of any fidelity to the source!). I didn't find anything about this funny, especially not when it goes into Very Bad Things territory in its second half, and as social criticism it's even less convincing: like the other riders on post-QT waves, the film openly sides with its negative central characters, offering only the repeated chiding of "Look at these dumb fucks," &c. True, they are dumb, but note how intent the film is that we follow their journey, and making sure their initial victim is as repulsive as possible so as to make it easier to side with them. To be clear, I don't object to the film taking their side, I just don't think the film can survive being an effective work of satire or class commentary at the same time (you can't claim to criticize the central characters and/or what they represent when you're so in love with 'em), and the whole endeavor becomes one big "So what."

[knives]

I think your criticism about siding would only work if it didn't so thoroughly spend the second half making us side with the victim to the point of inventing a catharsis with him. While initially the dumb fuck point of view might be the more compelling one as the movie goes along it at least tries to show how their philosophy is absolutely repugnant and not just stupidly represented while the victim gets ennobled (the bit about the food) so that while the film never sides with him it at least develops a respect for him.

[swo17]

Don't forget that, given the true life ending of the story, the movie could have really stuck it to Shalhoub's character in the end if it had wanted to.

[domino harvey]

SpoilerShow

Does it though? It may shift further into black humor starting with the first attempted murder and then culminating in all clusterfuck stuff in the last thirty minutes (the chainsaw exchange at Home Depot, BBQ-ing hands, &c) but the narrative is still in their corner. I don't think the tide ever turns towards Shaloub's character, and indeed only Ed Harris comes off well for having begrudging faith in him in the first place. When the film pulls its last minute reversal and ends with Harris lamenting on how great the simple things are, it's like I accidentally switched channels onto another movie (It's also the same basic ending of Fargo-- "And here you are. And it's a beautiful day"...)

[knives]

I honestly don't see how the narrative is still in their corner beyond staying in their POV generally though, and I'm sure you agree, POV is different from being sympathetic with. I also have to disagree about Harris who I think the film is absolutely in love with and does everything in its power to make seem like the perfect American which I suppose is less fun than the three idiots, but that's a different argument. That faith in Shaloub seems a bit of characterization of how Harris is the good guy. Actually I have to strongly agree with your Fargo comparison, though probably not in the way you intended. Like that film for the first half of the movie we're stuck with the villains when the hero of the piece doesn't appear until the midway point. Harris definitely is playing Marge exactly (which I suppose might just feed into your other complaint, but I don't necessarily disagree with that).

[tenia]

Cross-topic cross-website : was just discussing Pain & Gain on a French forum, ended up on the 2010-2014 list discussion here, and finally in this very thread.

I second knives on Pain & Gain, which really struck me as a weird-funny-scary surprise. I really didn't expect this from a Bay movie, but it actually is a very slick multi-layered parable around a greedy perverted American dream of a bunch of stupid amateurs who might actually deserve getting laughed at their faces.

It also has a ton of visual symbols, some obvious (Wahlberg doing crunches on the big advertising billboard, looking either as a full-bodied muscle, or a full-bodied dick getting hard ("Get hard ! I'll make you Kobe beef !") and soft and hard again (linking also to the Mickie character who takes shots to get pumped-up muscles, but also to, well, get hard).


It's kind of Bay's Fight Club, a stupid superficial movie about stupid superficial people, which actually has much more irony and cynicism to offer than what it seems at first glance. It has the looks (the photography is marvelous at making some shots looking like advertisments for barbecues, and muscle cars, and lawn-mowers, and big houses), it has the background themes (religion, redemption, the Rockefeller American Dream), but ultimately, don't worry : even if these guys go to jail and get death-sentenced (IRL, the judge who heard the case is... Judge Alex. Of course.), there are plenty of others who don't care and still want to believe they can succeed.

That's the American dream.

For those interested / who can read French, a French forumer analysed many visual aspects of the movie :
http://totichoux.informe.com/forum/cine ... 23-70.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://totichoux.informe.com/forum/cine ... 23-80.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[therewillbeblus]

Maybe I just saw a different movie than the rest of you, but I didn't think this film endorsed its conservative principals' worldviews at all. Right out of the gate we are invited into a baldfaced contemptuous satire that throws every piece of conservative ideology on the table, and brazenly laughs at them in irreverently oversimplified form. Even when Bay could bring some neutral compassion into the script, like Bar Paly's introduction as she narrates an idolization of Wahlberg resembling her dreams for moving to America, we quickly zoom out to see him objectively feeble, neglectful, pathetic, selfish, etc. in direct contrast to her subjectivity, drowning it out with a visual meanspirited joke. The script may have indulged her differently on the page for all I know, but Bay ruthlessly cuts away before she's able to entertain her own delusion, minimizing her worth as well as Wahlberg's and everybody else- or more specifically, the worth of their images of themselves and the mirages of their narratives.

There's value in how Bay uses his multitasking technical skills to involve us in the action of overlapping voiceover narratives forming characterization whilst simultaneously mocking them, but he's self-reflexively keeping things superficial as he invites us into cinematically surrogate "emotional" stakes in a vague yet perceptible (rather than internal) sense. I didn't for a second think the film was in love with its characters in a way that was also validating their depth, because the entire ethos of the film (and of Bay's oeuvre) is that the surface is more meaningful than the core- whether it's Wahlberg's bootstraps philosophy of No Excuses, Take Control Of Your Life or a more critical lens of justice diminishing the principals' emotional insides in favor of their objectively harmful actions, or the fun in lively entertainment from absurd social dynamics or violence or the spectacle of film grammar. When the activity is moving toward vulnerability, or when a character's voiceover initiates an opportunity for empathy on behalf of the viewership, Bay cuts away with a sharp 'Nope', instinctively shouts 'Boring' with his camera, utilizing his power- not unlike Tarantino- to manipulate history according to his own idea of what deserves attention. That he's completely transparent about this being a movie and him issuing the control of artifice, not to mention refusing to artificially plow into the bowels of his characters and keeping things up-front on observable ground, is ironically demonstrating a humility that some filmmakers would forgo by taking the assumed -but often misjudged- "mature" route, pretending to know the innerworkings of these guys and irresponsibly exploring them with bewildering sincerity.

I love how Bay doesn't aim disrespectfully at a single space to eviscerate- he's peripherally scraping the exteriors of all the cars in the garage, when going after one area of cultural markers would exhibit more of a political side. For example, the way he sneers at the self-imposed power of slogans in general, from self-help gurus to AA, is inclusively posturing at the idea of selling and being sold, the American Dream's extrinsic forms of engagement. Rock's morality through 12-step fellowships and religion are similar- he rigidly ties himself to ideas that clearly mean something to him authentically, but are preposterously applied in places that cultivate problematic or vapid results, diluting their worth in the comprehensive "objective" space of the film. Obviously this is not objective, it's Bay's knowingly-compromised version of a True Story, but by framing the events as he does, he reveals a novel, nonpartisan sobriety to where we should or should not place our values. The answer, according to Bay? Well, I don't think there's a didactic solution, but he's asserting that, whatever that place is, it's not in the subjective minds of rationalized fantasies.

I'm not sure if it matters if they're conservative or liberal or what, but he's choosing a few easy target demographics to deliver a more comprehensive social commentary on subscribing narrowly to narcissistic virtues as synonymous with Truth. I'm unconvinced he's even targeting a bootstraps mentality either- but rather using it and several other familiar examples to gut anyone who blindly follows dogmatic content, ignores alternative perspectives that would promote growth (or at least facilitate non-pigheaded collaboration that could minimize tyrannical outcomes), or retreats into themselves around shallow selfish ends to justify means when it's all meaningless. For a director who prides himself on being aware of what's happening in the world and is ultrasensitive to at least animals' consciousness, I suspect he's critiquing the broader psychosocial phenomenon of solipsistic disengagement over any sociopolitical group or attitude.

These characters are asleep in their own daydreams of what a precious American life entails, having drank the kool-aid on what's cool or deserved or predictable, and incredibly delicate and affective when these false "promises" are not met, like a toxically-aggressive and less sympathetic version of Warren Oates' GTO in Two Lane Blacktop. Then we have Ed Harris, who is just as asleep as the rest of them, introduced by sincerely saying his wife is the best thing that ever happened to him just as she's flatly nagging him, destroying his narrative as well, and then goes on to obliterate any merit in his superficial leisurely activities of fishing et al. as he monotonously declares he dislikes them before going back to work. Bay seems to be acknowledging that everything is absurd- the surface, the insides, or whatever. There's a moment late in the film where the Rock spouts an internal monologue affirming his religious ideals around stealing, before saying "dead people don't need their stuff, and I did"- the Me and Mine reality trumping theoretical principles. That's the movie in a nutshell: He's not necessarily 'wrong', but what is wrong is the 'process of being', the lack of self-awareness that could lead to external awareness if humbly recognized. It's not, and generally we don't do that, so why not skewer that thinking process for us all to gawk at.

Bay isn't negating the value of AA or religion with Rock, but how we firmly rely on crutches of concepts to deliver prophetic confirmations of our delusions of grandeur, unwilling to yield to our fragility that might make us better people and understand the world and ourselves a bit more, accessing the layers that institutions like AA or religions or conservative or liberal ideologies provide. It's somewhat ironic that Bay, who by all accounts is a control-freak operating like these characters on his film sets, is poking fun at this behavior- but the entire film seems to be one giant mockery of everyone, as we're all susceptible to these natural and socially constructed defensive cognitive-behavioral patterns to some extent. The more expansive irony is that we probably refuse to see these qualities in ourselves, when regardless of political affiliation, we possess them. Is that what leads people to assume it's a conservative film, or that the function is to only target one demographic- a projection that diffuses attention away from our own loose identification with delusional narcissism around our own perspectives as inflexibly superior, thus certifying the film's theme unconsciously in a meta-form? Either way, this is definitely Bay's smartest film. The entire mass audience coming for an action blockbuster are guinea pigs for our own blind satirization.