Pain & Gain (2013) - Bay succeeds with smaller scope testosterone-fueled true-crime

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Three Hollywood beefcakes against the Stars and Stripes make up this poster for Michael Bay's Pain & Gain

Daniel Lugo is an ambitious bodybuilder and trainer in Miami, Florida, who wants more and makes a plan of how he's going to get it: With two compadres he intends to kidnap a rich man and steal everything he owns.

 

Pain & Gain is written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (You Kill Me (2007), both), based on a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles about the real-life Sun Gym gang written by Pete Collins. The film is directed by Michael Bay (Bad Boys (1995)).

Bay appropriates a Goodfellas (1990)-like approach to this incredible, more or less true crime story, which succeeds largely thanks to a tremendous cast: Dwayne Johnson (The Other Guys (2010)) is charismatic and funny as a neo-Christian coke-head, and Anthony Mackie (Seberg (2019)) and Mark Wahlberg (Planet of the Apes (2001)) give themselves 100 % as the Stooges-like gang's other two knucklehead members. Tony Shalhoub (Rosy (2018)) is frenetic as one unsympathetic victim; Rebel Wilson (Bridesmaids (2011)) is funny; Rob Cordry (80 for Brady (2023)) is cool; and Ed Harris (Absolute Power (1997)) is perfect as the detective who becomes the group's downfall.

Photographed (by Ben Seresin (The Mummy (2017)) with the expected visual flair and eye for details of excess from the sickly Miami life. A part of the fun in Pain & Gain is undeniably in poor taste, (SPOILER especially the chainsaw scene), but since it is a Bay picture about criminal bodybuilders in Miami, this reservation seems pointless. The film gets a bit lost in all the points of its outrageous story and thereby grows long. Yet it remains very entertaining as a dark-humored crime dramedy.

 

Related posts:

 

Michael Bay: 13 Hours/13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) - Bay portrays controversial recent history in generally thrilling actioner 

Pearl Harbor (2001) - Bay's stuffed war melodrama baloney 

Armageddon (1998) or, Macho Men Save Earth From Disaster!  

Top 10: Best cop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 

Bad Boys (1995) - Bay's successful buddy cop debut is still fun

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 26 mil. $

Box office: 87.3 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 3.35 times its cost)

[Pain & Gain premiered 11 April (Miami, Florida) and runs 129 minutes. Shooting took place from April - June 2012 in Miami, Florida. The film opened #1 to a 20.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 3 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3-#4), grossing 49.8 mil. $ (57 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Russia with 7.2 mil. $ (8.2 %) and Germany with 6.2 mil. $ (7.1 %). Sun Gym gang victim Mark Schiller sued over his portrayal in the film, and Paramount paid him an undisclosed sum to drop the suit. Bay returned with Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). Johnson returned in Fast & Furious 6 (2013); Wahlberg in 2 Guns (2013). Pain & Gain is rotten at 50 % with a 5.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Pain & Gain? 

Avengers: Endgame (2019) - The superhero super-pack deliver a massive, thrilling culmination

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+ Best Blockbuster of the Year (2,797.3 mil. $ gross) + Best Superhero Movie of the Year + Most Profitable Movie of the Year: 761.9 mil. $ range

A traditionally character-stuffed poster for Anthony and Joe Russo's Avengers: Endgame

In the wake of Thanos' decimation of the Avengers and half of all life in the universe as such, the remaining heroes gather around a time-traveling plan to reverse the disaster and defeat the purple giant.

Avengers: Endgame is written by Christopher Markus (You Kill Me (2007)) and Stephen McFreely (Pain & Gain (2013)) and directed by great Ohioan brother filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo (Pieces (1997)). It is by far the best of the now four Avengers movies, as well as the provisional climax of the now 22 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The film picks up after the surprising ending of the preceding chapter, Avengers: Infinity War (2018), which killed off several major characters, (Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Peter 'Star-Lord' Quill among others), which has added some emotional depth to the narrative, - whether it is fully absorbed or not, (I for one have a hard time getting very emotionally invested in the Avengers superhero mashup, but I can recognize the narrative's bloom anyway.)
Absent in Infinity War, Paul Rudd's (The Catcher Was a Spy (2018)) Scott 'Ant-Man' Lang turns up with the impetus for the solution to the catastrophe: And no one with pop culture background should be surprised to learn that it is a time machine. Rudd also adds fun, - as does Chris Hemsworth (In the Heart of the Sea (2015)) as a flabby, almost obese Thor, - to the increasingly complex plot, which is luckily highly entertaining, even if certain parts of it fly by without achieving full comprehension. Brie Larson's (21 Jump Street (2012)) Carol 'Captain Marvel' Danvers turns up, - and for us who haven't yet seen Captain Marvel (2019), she arrives out of the blue, full of power, but without us gaining much insight into who she is here.
Excitement is successfully built up in the long narrative, and the co-working of the many characters that we have gotten to know through the various individual character movies, is satisfying. The action sequences and especially the ending are thrilling, and Josh Brolin's (The Dead Girl (2006)) motion-captured Thanos is plenty fascinating as a villain and visually enticing piece of work to center another film.
The ending of this super-length superhero extravaganza also has a super-length denouement, SPOILER as Tony 'Iron Man' Stark (Robert Downey Jr. (Bowfinger (1999)) is buried and Steve 'Captain America' Rogers (Chris Evans (The Paper Boy (2003, short))) passes his gauntlet on to Sam 'Falcon' Wilson, the new Captain America, it seems, and it almost - only almost - wears out the film's welcome.
The list of stars in Endgame seems never-ending, and thankfully, Marvel and the Russos have succeeded in making a great and very impressive piece of entertainment out of this colossal spectacle.

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Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 356 mil. $
Box office: 2,714.1 mil. $ and counting
= Huge hit (has returned its cost 7.62 times as of writing this)
[Avengers: Endgame premiered 22 April (Los Angeles, California) and runs 181 minutes. Shooting took place in Georgia, including Atlanta, and in the UK from August 2017 - January 2018. Re-shoots took place from September - October 2018 and in January 2019. Evans and Hemsworth were paid 15 mil. $ each for their performances. Russian authorities delayed the film's release in Russia to protect local films' performances. It opened #1 to a 357.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for another 2 weeks and spent the following 2 in the top 5 (#2-#3), where it may yet return. It has grossed 815.7 mil. $ domestically, where several AMC theaters stayed open 24 hours a day to screen the film around the clock. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets yet are China (614.3 mil. $) and the UK (111.4 mil. $). It is the highest-grossing film of the year, highest-grossing superhero movie of all time, 2nd highest-grossing movie of all time (only beaten by Avatar (2009)), and 5th highest-grossing of all time when adjusted for inflation. It made 1 bil. $ in 5 days, - the fastest ever for a film. The Russo brothers are in pre-production with their next film, Cherry (2020), a war/drug/heist-themed drama with Tom Holland (Spider-Man). Downey Jr. returns in The Voyage of Doctor Dolittle (2020), Evans in Knives Out (2019), and Brolin in Dune (2020). Avengers: Endgame is certified fresh at 94 % with an 8.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Avengers: Endgame?