Pain & Gain

Traditionally, I have not been a fan of the Rock. His movie I've seen before have not been great, and I really didn't think a wrestler could make his way in and be taken seriously, at least not by me, in major films like Pain & Gain.

I am slowly figuring out that I am wrong.

The cool thing about this movie was that I watched it after I watched Paranoia. Paranoia attempted to give a story about a man who wanted to "fulfill the American Dream but was limited by the rich men who had achieved that dream and did all they could to hold on to it. Pain and Gain instead is a group of body builders achieving the American Dream by any means necessary.

Pain & Gain is the true story of three body builders who want to make it big. The way they decide to do that is to kidnap a wealthy man, force him to sign away his possessions and fortunes to them.

This crew is made up of Daniel Lugo (played by Mark Wahlberg) Paul Doyle (The Rock) and Adrian "Noel" Doorbal. Lugo is the leader and brain child of the heist as it were. Doorbal is more of his number two I think, and Doyle, being the biggest one there seems to be the muscle.

They kidnap Victor Kershaw (played by Tony Shalhoub, that guy from Monk) The great thing about Tony Shalhoub is that he plays this really cocky, asshole jewish millionaire. In many ways you should feel bad for him because he's being kidnaped, tortured and almost murdered for his possessions. At the same time, he's a real asshole.

The movie creates a weird dynamic that in a strange way makes you root for the people committing the crime here. Its very strange because throughout the movie you see Lugo as an asshole manipulating Doyle and Doorbal in order to get what he wants. But at the same time you see them as people on the other side looking in.

And that's probably the main problem with the movie. Its a dark comedy about real life events. If this were a fictional story all the way through, I would think this is actually a stellar movie, utilizing comedy with a really dark subject matter.

The problem is, portraying Tony Shalhoub as a dick, accurate or not, makes you think, wow, they put him on a laundry conveyer belt, blindfolded him for days and eventually tried to put him in a car crash, blow him up, and ran him over with a car? Why am I laughing at this?

Maybe I'm a horrible person but I was laughing. And if you go into it thinking this movie is fictional, again, its very good. But the movie keeps reminding you its a true story.

I don't know. Its a strange movie. Its a movie you shouldn't try to forget its true and in the end you really shouldn't be laughing at it.

The Rock and Mark Wahlberg are fantastic in this movie and their relationship is so good. I love Anthony Mackie, and his relationship with his wife (played by Rebel Wilson) is pretty funny. But it doesn't compare to the relationship between the Rock and Wahlberg. The Rock, while he's the biggest one there, could not hurt a fly. He's this nice guy who is probably the only one we should be feeling sympathy for.

He's just out of prison, he's in AA, he's really trying to turn his life around and Marky Marky comes in and just fucks everything up.

Mark Wahlberg, is hilarious in this film. I'm convinced the man is very good with comedy movies. Its funny because there's a lot of scenes in this movie that reminded me of his character from Ted and I love that.

The thing I love about this movie is that while its a comedy and I still haven't seen anything really spectacular from the Rock that makes me think he can pull off the serious roles, (maybe roles that he's in talks for with DC), I was still impressed by his performance in this movie. He made me feel for his character, he made me believe he was a really nice guy that just got pulled into a shitty situation with the wrong people. He gets addicted to coke and he starts committing crime again but the end subtitle for him is great when it says how long he served in prison and has since being trying to apologize.

Ed Harris plays a private investigator who is the only one who will listen to Tony Shalhoub. He's the one that leads the investigation.

Ed Harris is good in this movie. He's not as memorable as The Rock or Mark Wahlberg, he's just Ed Harris. There's not much else to say, he gives a solid supporting performance and he does add to the movie.

The film overall is pretty good. I enjoyed it until I start thinking about the fact that its a true story... and a comedy. It must be pretty weird being the family of Victor Kreshaw (a different name in order to preserve the safety of his identity) or the family of the two people who are murdered in this film and say, "Wow, my family member just got murdered in this film and I'm suppose to laugh at Mark Wahlberg getting through it by lifting weights"

Its another good thing about the movie, it totally captures people who are really into lifting weights. I happen to know people that are just like this and there were sometimes in the movie that I was wondering if this could be them in the future.

There's a great scene when sometime goes terribly wrong and Mark Wahlberg is freaking out. So much he just says, I gotta lift. So he starts lifting. As him and The Rock are talking about what they're going to do next, the Rock will suddenly stop and say, "Ooo that's a nice lift"

And it sucks that the humor is so dry and really well executed in this film. I really want to like it because on face value its a really smart comedy. But then you start thinking about the true story and you're wondering why you're laughing and its just an overall strange movie.

I don't know how accurate the story is with real events, and knowing Michael Bay, its probably pretty embellished, but they keep telling us this is a true story within the movie and I almost with this was sort of like Fargo.

In Fargo they paint it off as a true story but when you read about it you actually figure out that a lot of it was just pulling from different cases and putting them together to make a really good film. Also, Fargo, while funny, never glorified the ones committing the crime, it just made them look like idiots. Pain & Gain makes everyone look like idiots, including the victims and makes some of the main characters look like misunderstood criminals instead of assholes who deserve to be put to death.

The more I read about it is that the case was actually pretty close to the real thing.

Dammit Michael Bay the moment you get something right you do it at the wrong time.

I enjoyed Pain & Gain. Maybe its because I'm a horrible person, maybe its something else. I do think it could have been tweaked to give a little bit more dignity to the victims in the movie but overall I thought it was smart, funny, and an interesting topic, even though grossly inappropriate at times.

But have you seen Pain & Gain? What did you think about it? Comment below and discuss.

I'll leave you with this. Sometimes you just need to be asked the age old question, Do You Even Lift? I've found a video that brings it down to a science. Enjoy!