You can’t just kidnap a guy and take his things! That is so illegal!

Pain & Gain

(2013)

It’s been suggested that Pain & Gain is Sturm und Drang-meister Michael Bay’s take on a little arty movie; his version of a Coen Brothers picture, if you will. It’s certainly small by his standards (budget-wise, as opposed to posturing). And there are also recognisable Coens touchstones present; a crime tale of less-than-cerebral criminals whose abysmal plans quickly spiral out of control. It also has the based-on-a-true-story cachet that Fargo didn’t really have at all, actually. And it’s because the plucked-from-the-headlines tale is so bizarre, a litany of cluelessness and ultra-violence, that it sustains the interest. But it’s not for want of Bay forcibly testing our patience. He has no concept of economy, and in the end Pain & Gain outstays its welcome when it should have been short, sharp, and just a little sick.

A purveyor of excess was probably never the right person to bring an account of excess to the screen, even though the marriage looks perfect on paper. You can’t effectively ramp up individual moments when your entire film is ramped up. Every scene is hyper-kinetic or luridly embossed. There’s no room for tonal shifts or ironic comment when what’s on screen is an unfiltered reflection of the director’s bent for wild indulgence. There’s a point where telling us about cocaine withdrawal via an onscreen title isn’t going to help us really differentiate between the Rock’s perspective and any other aggressively extreme we are witnessing (so similar are these on-screen freeze frames to those employed in Burn Notice, I began to wonder if Bay’s sum-total research for his Miami shoot was watching the entire series).

The script, from screenwriting duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the Narnia adaptations and Captain Americas, amongst others), is based on a series of New York Times articles by Pete Collins, and recounts how a trio of bodybuilders (played by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie) kidnapped, tortured and attempted to murder a rich gym attendee (Tony Shaloub) in order to extort his fortune. They aren’t blessed with much in the way of grey matter, and at every stage their incompetence is writ large; it takes several kidnap attempts to actually get their man, then weeks of “persuasion” before he signs over his assets. And then, when they try to off him, a succession of bids (car crash, incineration, running him over) fails to do the trick.

While Markus and McFeely employ several effective devices, notably multiple voice-overs used to frequently ironic effect (highlighting that the trio’s would-be genius moves are nothing of the sort), they probably should have pruned their material. The story also encompasses a further scheme that goes gruesomely wrong, and then covers the gang’s trial; there’s something too literal and schematic to the construction, even if everyone involved seems to be under the illusion they are up to something daring and original. One might argue it’s rather tasteless to make light of a tale of murder and dismemberment, but the real problem is of one prevailing approach. No one has anything to say about these guys or this story; there’s no insight into what makes them tick, any more than there is into the assholes they prey upon. To that extent, it’s an example of equal opportunities shallowness. We’re only supposed to take away that the gang are “dumb, stupid fucks”, as Ed Harris’ private detective concisely summarises (Harris nearly brings a bit of class to the proceedings, but it’s a lost battle).

At least the three main actors don’t put a foot wrong. Wahlberg’s turn as Lugo may seem a little familiar, but he’s a natural at playing dumb to comic effect (“Oh my God, this guy understands me” is his genuine response to Ken Jeong’s motivational speaker). Mackie’s Doorbal starts off with some fizz, a steroid-fuelled chatterbox suffering from impotence and a tiny manhood, but as the movie progresses he is rather eclipsed by his co-stars.

It’s the Rock who steals the show, however. Doyle, a Born Again Christian, is dumb even by his co-conspirators’ standards (“I honestly don’t know how he figures this stuff out” is his awed reaction to Lugo’s plan). His is the most sympathetic character (how likable they were in real life is no doubt debatable, but Bay clearly has affection for his protagonists), and he gets all the best material as he runs the gamut from Jesus Freak to cokehead to armed robber and back again.

The supporting cast is less consistent. Shaloub is suitably despicable, but for some reason his character doesn’t quite attain the comic heights he should; I blame Bay. The director, never one to dodge the obvious, has also chosen comedy performers regardless of whether they are suitable. Rob Corddry is fine as the owner of the gym Lugo works at, but Jeong is just wheeling out the same old act. And Rebel Wilson is excruciatingly annoying. She appears to have walked in from the set of another movie; her dialogue sounds improvised and she may as well be riffing directly to the audience, but not in a good way.

Because Bay can’t slow down, the stronger ideas and elements tend to merge with the weaker ones. In a nice touch, Shaloub is such an incredible jerk that the police don’t take his story seriously. But as the movie progresses the grip on the story slackens; anything seems to get a nod. Scenes are laboured, such as Lugo presenting a neighbourhood watch lecture, or lack impact, as when Doyle barbecuing his victims’ body parts. Or they just show us tired old Bay doing for-the-sake-of-it gross-out (Doyle’s shot-off toe).

The director’s teenage attitude to sex, last seen with the hotties he cast in Transformers, is also present and correct. There are dumb bimbos, fake chests and a plethora of dildos. Is Bay aware of the irony of making a movie about morons that serves to underlines his own similarities with them? “Look how smart and self-aware I am”, he seems to be saying, while his every frame tells a different story. Pain & Gain is his best movie in a decade but even as a low budget personal project it suffers from Bay’s usual glossy ADD bloat. And, as usual, fatigue inevitably sets in.

***

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Life is like a box of timelines. You feel me?

Russian Doll Season One
(SPOILERS) It feels like loading the dice to proclaim something necessarily better because it’s female-driven, but that’s the tack The Hollywood Reporter took with its effusive review of Russian Doll, suggesting “although Nadia goes on a similar journey of self-discovery to Bill Murray’s hackneyed reporter in Groundhog Day, the fact that the show was created, written by and stars women means that it offers up a different, less exploitative and far more thoughtful angle” (than the predominately male-centric entries in the sub-genre). Which rather sounds like Rosie Knight changing the facts to fit her argument. And ironic, given star Natasha Lyonne has gone out of her way to stress the show’s inclusive message. Russian Dollis good, but the suggestion that “unlike its predecessors (it) provides a thoughtfulness, authenticity and honesty which makes it inevitable end (sic) all the more powerful” is cobblers.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

We’re not owners here, Karen. We’re just passing through.

Out of Africa (1985)
I did not warm to Out of Africa on my initial viewing, which would probably have been a few years after its theatrical release. It was exactly as the publicity warned, said my cynical side; a shallow-yet-bloated, awards-baiting epic romance. This was little more than a well-dressed period chick flick, the allure of which was easily explained by its lovingly photographed exotic vistas and Robert Redford rehearsing a soothing Timotei advert on Meryl Streep’s distressed locks. That it took Best Picture only seemed like confirmation of it as all-surface and no substance. So, on revisiting the film, I was curious to see if my tastes had “matured” or if it deserved that dismissal.

If you could just tell me what those eyes have seen.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
(SPOILERS) Robert Rodriguez’ film of James Cameron’s at-one-stage-planned film of Yukito Kishiro’s manga Gunnm on the one hand doesn’t feel overly like a Rodriguez film, in that it’s quite polished, so certainly not of the sort he’s been making of late – definitely a plus – but on the other, it doesn’t feel particularly like a Jimbo flick either. What it does well, it mostly does very well – the action, despite being as thoroughly steeped in CGI as Avatar – but many of its other elements, from plotting to character to romance, are patchy or generic at best. Despite that, there’s something likeable about the whole ludicrously expensive enterprise that is Alita: Battle Angel, a willingness to be its own kind of distinctive misfit misfire.

I don’t think you will see President Pierce again.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
(SPOILERS) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and other tall tales of the American frontier is the title of "the book" from which the Coen brothers' latest derives, and so announces itself as fiction up front as heavily as Fargo purported to be based on a true story. In the world of the portmanteau western – has there even been one before? – theme and content aren't really all that distinct from the more familiar horror collection, and as such, these six tales rely on sudden twists or reveals, most of them revolving around death. And inevitably with the anthology, some tall tales are stronger than other tall tales, the former dutifully taking up the slack.

We’re looking for a bug no one’s seen before. Some kind of smart bug.

Starship Troopers (1997)
(SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi trio of Robocop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers are frequently claimed to be unrivalled in their genre, but it’s really only the first of them that entirely attains that rarefied level. Discussion and praise of Starship Troopers is generally prefaced by noting that great swathes of people – including critics and cast members – were too stupid to realise it was a satire. This is a bit of a Fight Club one, certainly for anyone from the UK (Verhoeven commented “The English got it though. I remember coming out of Heathrow and seeing the posters, which were great. They were just stupid lines about war from the movie. I thought, ‘Finally someone knows how to promote this.’”) who needed no kind of steer to recognise what the director was doing. And what he does, he does splendidly, even if, at times, I’m not sure he entirely sustains a 129-minute movie, since, while both camp and OTT, Starship Troopers is simultaneously required t…

Mountains are old, but they're still green.

Roma (2018)
(SPOILERS) Roma is a critics' darling and a shoe-in for Best Foreign Film Oscar, with the potential to take the big prize to boot, but it left me profoundly indifferent, its elusive majesty remaining determinedly out of reach. Perhaps that's down to generally spurning autobiographical nostalgia fests – complete with 65mm widescreen black and white, so it's quite clear to viewers that the director’s childhood reverie equates to the classics of old – or maybe the elliptical characterisation just didn't grab me, but Alfonso Cuarón's latest amounts to little more than a sliver of substance beneath all that style.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
(SPOILERS) The concluding chapter of John Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy (preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness) is also, sadly, his last great movie. Indeed, it stands apart in the qualitative wilderness that beset him during the ‘90s (not for want of output). Michael De Luca’s screenplay had been doing the rounds since the ‘80s, even turned down by Carpenter at one point, and it proves ideal fodder for the director, bringing out the best in him. Even cinematographer Gary K Kibbe seems inspired enough to rise to the occasion. It could do without the chugging rawk soundtrack, perhaps, but then, that was increasingly where Carpenter’s interests resided (as opposed to making decent movies).

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog