Pain & Gain lacks subtlety, but not style

Movies love to declare themselves as “based on a true story.” The phrase automatically infuses an extra shot of legitimacy to the story, despite wild deviations from any real tale.

$$$ · Paul Doyle, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, runs through the streets of Miami after getting involved in with a notorious gang. – Courtesy of Jaimie Trueblood

Pain & Gain, infamous director Michael Bay’s new film, goes to great lengths to ensure its viewers know it is based on actual events, including stopping halfway through to flash text on the screen reminding us of this fact.

This is a good thing, as the twists and turns that the story takes are so ridiculous that, if it wasn’t for the reminder that this all actually happened, people would probably walk out shaking their heads, laughing at the scriptwriter. Instead, Pain & Gain becomes a fascinating and hilarious ode to ambition and stupidity.

The film shows the downward spiral of the “Sun Gym Gang,” the perpetrators of a series of kidnappings, murders and extortions in Miami during the early ’90s.

A ballooning Mark Wahlberg plays Danny Lugo, a personal trainer and bodybuilder who gets a gang together to kidnap a Miami millionaire and force him to sign over all his assets.

Dwayne Johnson, looking even more mountainous than usual, plays Lugo’s dense, recovering-alcoholic, born-again Christian friend and, frankly, steals the movie with his unhinged, deadpan delivery and charm. Together, with an equally muscular Anthony Mackie, they pull off the plan but handle any and all complications with the finesse of a rhinoceros.

Bay takes a break from filming exploding alien robots to direct all of this and surprisingly, does very well. Bay does not garner much respect from movie critics who don’t find much subtlety in his directorial style, but this character-driven plot, though as far from subtle as a film can get, might actually be the perfect movie for him.

Again, subtlety is almost nowhere to be found, but that does not sink Pain & Gain. The main characters are all over-the-top, steroid-popping criminals. They talk loudly and obsess over sex, drugs and their next set in the gym.

The jokes, too, are crass, and they keep coming — not only from the lead characters but also from a laundry list of current comedy stars (Ken Jeong, Rebel Wilson, Rob Corddry) in supporting roles. The humor in the film is really no different really from the jokes Bay usually employs in his scripts, except that in this case they work beautifully. Subtlety would have been a mistake.

The film plays out like Scarface on steroids, both literally and figuratively, with the power-hungry Lugo driving himself to the top by any means necessary, then suffering under the strain of all he has done and the consequences of his highly impulsive decisions. Bay does not attempt to hide this parallel, even having Wahlberg imitate an accent similar to Al Pacino’s infamous “Cuban” accent for one scene. Then of course, there’s the Miami setting and piles of cocaine.

However, there is a marked difference to making a hero out of a fictional Tony Montana than making one out of a man currently on death row for the crimes shown in this movie. The emphasis on this being a true story seems to cement this.

The question now is: Is that difference good or bad? The audience is seemingly directed to root for a man and actions that actually caused a lot of pain in people’s lives.

Though Scarface had its basis in the crime world that existed in Miami and South America, and the drug industry it glorified negatively affected thousands of lives, it can protect itself behind the shield of “fiction.” There are no victims of Tony Montana walking around Miami.

There are, however, people walking around who have been personally victimized by Lugo’s excessive violence and recklessness. Therefore, creating a movie that gets him played by a big Hollywood star such as Wahlberg seems to come with questions about the ethics of glamorizing real-world criminal behavior.

Then again, the fact that this was a true story gives Pain & Gain more punch than Scarface ever could making the whole ordeal worthwhile viewing. It tells us that someone saw Scarface and loved it. Then it tells us that, unlike the overwhelming majority of people who have watched it, this person didn’t stop at making impressions of Tony’s accent but decided he wanted to be Tony.

On top of this, the story tells us this person actually managed to claw his way through crime and dumb luck to the top and was victim to the accompanying fall. This all actually happened.

Bay takes this unbelievable story, takes the over-the-top tone and simple dialogue that seems so out of place in the mouths of government agents in the Transformers movies and sticks them in a setting where they actually seem essential — a bodybuilders’ gang of high school dropouts. And by using the same tools that previously brought him ridicule, Bay delivers, crafting a hilarious movie filled with great performances that shouldn’t be missed. As hard as it might be for Bay-haters to believe, this is a true story.