Pain & Gain

Apparently based on a true story, Pain & Gain follows three bodybuilders (Mark Wahlberg’s Daniel Lugo, Dwayne Johnson’s Paul Doyle, and Anthony Mackie’s Adrian Doorbal) as they conspire to kidnap a wealthy businessman (Tony Shalhoub’s Victor Kershaw) and steal all his money – with problems naturally ensuing as the trio are faced with a variety of problems and issues in the crime’s aftermath. It’s an unabashedly lurid premise that is, at the outset, employed to unexpectedly engrossing effect by filmmaker Michael Bay, as the director’s notoriously slick sensibilities prove an ideal match for Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s pervasively sensationalistic screenplay. It’s clear, also, that the uniformly entertaining performances play a key role in cementing the movie’s early success, with, in particular, Johnson’s consistently mesmerizing turn as the dim-witted Doyle ranking as a highlight in both the proceedings and the actor’s entire body of work. The frenetic narrative, perhaps inevitably, slowly-but-surely progresses from attention-grabbing to exhausting, however, and the viewer’s interest, as a result, begins to wane somewhere around the one-hour mark and never completely recovers (ie it’s all just too much, ultimately). And while it’s admittedly rather impressive just how dark the story eventually becomes (ie this is a film that earns its R rating, to be sure), Pain & Gain, in the end, comes off as just another palpably excessive endeavor from a filmmaker lacking in anything resembling restraint – which is a shame, certainly, given the potential of the performances and the true-life storyline.

** out of ****