Pain and Gain [8/10]
Introduction
Pain & Gain was Directed by Michael Bay, yet it has very few explosions, and none of them are very large. It is also not the traditional 'action packed' action movie. This is a movie I recommend strongly and is based on a true story.
Film Information
Director: Michael Bay
Actors (Top Billed): Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub
Genre: Action - Comedy
Length: 129 Minutes
Action Rating: 5/10
Comedy Rating: 9/10
Overall Rating: 8/10
The Story
Pain & Gain was based off a true story, one that belonged to a man called Marc Schiller. While not entirely accurate, it is chilling to see how close to the real encounters the story was on so many levels. While funny, very funny, during many many scenes, the movie has its own depraved sense of humour that made you question if you should even be laughing.
The characters themselves are again not entirely accurate, but are again fairly close. The names of the three 'bad guys' are accuratly portrayed and as the credits roll, their real pictures are shown next to their names.
The general rundown of what the story entails is as follows (some spoilers!);
A crew of body builders decide it's their turn to become rich and live the comfortable life. To do so they decide to force a man to sign over his entire estate to them, who they were of opinion that he did not deserve while they did.
In doing so they make some ... mistakes. These mistakes lead them to having to murder him. Only.. no matter what they do they can't seem to finish the job.
The man escapes, with no money or family to his name, and manages to make it alive to hospital. When interviewed by police his story is so whacky that they don't believe him. But a detective does, and works towards taking this crew down.
It is only once they get greedy and go after another rich couple that they finally get taken down and their whole scam goes down the tube.
The Humour
So this is a action-comedy. It means you are supposed to laugh, yet you almost feel guilty when you do. You are laughing at the expense of a man being held captive and tortured, at the expense of a man whos lack of education makes him appear incredibly dumb, yet while feeling bad for them you... don't. In fact at one stage it is almost expected you root for the bad guys because of how stupid they are. It just makes no sense! It's that good.
The movie reminds you at one stage that it is in fact a true story, that's how absurd it becomes. And while (as mentioned earlier) it is not 100% accurate, the story follows fairly closely the true to life events that occured. The stupidity of their actions leads to a majority of the laughs to be had in this movie.
The Action
So obviously you don't get Action-Comedy without the action. While there isn't a massive load of action in this movie, there is a decent amount of violence, hookers, drugs and general rich guy stuff. These guys don't know what they are doing so when the action buildup gets tense, they seem to ruin it with their antics and inability to stay on target.
But let's be honest, you're going to watch this for the comedy not the action. If you want an action movie, go watch Die Hard!
If you are interested in reading more about this story, here are some articles that may be of interest.
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1999-12-23/news/pain-gain/
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/27/true-story-behind-pain-and-gain
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