Pain & Gain

Name: Pain & Gain
Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller, Comedy, Crime
Released: April 26, 2013
Duration: 129 min
Rating: 45
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg

2013

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Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 350 Ratings

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 350 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Paramount Pictures | Release Date: April 26, 2013 | R

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg

Summary: A trio of bodybuilders in 1990s Miami get caught up in a kidnapping and extortion scheme that goes terribly wrong.

Director: Michael Bay

Genre(s): Action, Drama, Thriller, Comedy, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 129 min

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Critic Reviews

Kyle Smith

Apr 25, 2013

A dizzying lowlife saga that’s fast, smart, wicked, sort of ambitious and blazingly ironic. It’s as unpredictable as a Lindsay Lohan drive to the grocery store, as overstuffed as the pictures on Anthony Weiner’s Twitter feed and as hilarious as me on the bench press. Read full review

Chris Nashawaty

Apr 24, 2013

With Pain & Gain, his surprising true-crime comedy, Bay has finally decided to lighten up a bit. Read full review

Nick Schager

Apr 24, 2013

An outrageous based-on-real-life tale that's perfectly suited to director Michael Bay's insanely overblown stylistic and thematic temperament. Read full review

Barbara VanDenburgh

Apr 25, 2013

There’s a certain kinetic charm to the first half of the movie, a freewheeling silliness to these outsized characters that makes you curious to see just how wrong things will go. But as the weightlifters’ plot spirals out of control, so does the movie’s. Read full review

Betsy Sharkey

Apr 25, 2013

That sense of extreme, excess, over-the-top everything is there from start to finish. And isn't that what Bay fans count on even at cut-rate prices? Read full review

Ciara LaVelle

Apr 23, 2013

When the story runs off the rails and crashes headfirst into a too-perfect ending, it's because Bay was led astray by the same things that got the Sun Gym Gang into this mess in the first place: superficiality, ambition, and the belief that reality just isn't good enough. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

Apr 25, 2013

Michael Bay's absurdist comedy is all pain, no gain and an utter monstrosity. It may be the most unpleasant movie I've ever seen, and I'm not forgetting "Freaks," which Pain & Gain resembles, come to think of it. Read full review

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User Reviews

irepcocoabutta

Apr 28, 2013

nuff said....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

4 of 20 users found this helpful416

RyanSolomon

May 4, 2013

Pain and Gain is by far Michael Bay's best movie since The Rock. He directed a nearly perfect movie. The naysayers or this movie are probably still rapped up in the previous film by Michael Bay, Transformers 3. We can all agree that the third and hopefully final installment of thePain and Gain is by far Michael Bay's best movie since The Rock. He directed a nearly perfect movie. The naysayers or this movie are probably still rapped up in the previous film by Michael Bay, Transformers 3. We can all agree that the third and hopefully final installment of the Transformers franchise was dissapointing. However, this is definitely a redemption, it was a perfect balance between funny and serious, with a little bit of action. This movie, in better terms, was a brilliant piece of art.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

rapper2000

Apr 28, 2013

an undeniably entertaining movie with a great line of actors who all deliver. I found my self to be the only one laughing at times haha. overall the movie delivered and the ROCK is massive.

3 of 6 users found this helpful33

bm2759

Sep 24, 2013

Idiocy, and to a lesser extent, wonder. Truly that's what I took away with me. How there 3 criminals could be that confident and stupid made me wonder why they weren't caught sooner, people didn't suspect anything let alone how they performed it.

Twice the audience is told this is a trueIdiocy, and to a lesser extent, wonder. Truly that's what I took away with me. How there 3 criminals could be that confident and stupid made me wonder why they weren't caught sooner, people didn't suspect anything let alone how they performed it.

Twice the audience is told this is a true story. It must be if were told twice because this surely could happen in the real world? But then you find out it was and I curiously looked it up after the movie to learn more. Wow.

I'm not sure if it was intended but there is a message in this film: The American dream is not achievable for everyone, which means people will resort to any means to get it. Especially when you're a fitness freak with unlimited, zealous confidence and optimism. I left the cinema thinking all these positive messages out there are great but they too needs to be restrained. Otherwise we'd be like Daniel Lugo have an inflated sense of self worth, importance and direct all the energy into something wrong, stupid or bad. And that corrective thought is a good thing.

It's a silly, funny, ridiculous ride with a serious ending to reaffirm that desires can make you do stupid things… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

FlickFreaks83

Dec 11, 2015

Michael Bay's latest is a movie full of curious contradictions. It’s a grubby little indie story told with all the whoosh and whizz-bang of a summer tentpole. It’s a sort of goofy GoodFellas, based — unbelievably — on a true story, that is simultaneously satirical and moralistic about theMichael Bay's latest is a movie full of curious contradictions. It’s a grubby little indie story told with all the whoosh and whizz-bang of a summer tentpole. It’s a sort of goofy GoodFellas, based — unbelievably — on a true story, that is simultaneously satirical and moralistic about the American Dream. And it shifts hugely between the compulsive and the indulgent. If one thing’s for sure, it’s this: Pain & Gain is never dull.

Bay’s big problem is himself. You don’t get to become a brand name in yourself (his movies have made over $4.5 billion now) and then get to deliver your “smaller” projects in relative anonymity. Not unless you’re J. K. Rowling, that is. It would have been fascinating to have seen how Pain & Gain would have been received (it was released in the US in the spring, to below-average reviews) had it had another director’s name on the poster. Just as with Rowling, who published her new crime novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, under the pen-name Robert Galbraith, and received considerably better notices than for her first venture outside Hogwarts, Bay’s left-turn would most likely have been better appreciated.

The movie’s other problem lies in the real-life story (adapted from a series of articles from the Miami New Times) it is based on, which is so deliriously absurd it requires Bay to wryly and wittily observe with an opening title card, “Unfortunately, this is a true story,” and later, come its crackpot climax, follow-up with another stating simply: “This is still a true story.”

Seemingly invigorated by a budget on a par with the one he had for Bad Boys, and his first relatively grown-up certificate since that movie’s sequel, Bay goes to town with the material, delivering some mesmerisingly arch images — the high point being a shot of Mark Wahlberg in a swimming pool, his body size beautifully and scarily distorted beneath the water — and some cartoonish violence, barbecuing body parts and squishing skulls with an abandon that suits the story’s pumped-up excess.

His cast, meanwhile, embrace the grotesquerie with muscle-bound arms. Wahlberg plays Daniel — a man who considers being fat “more than sickening. It’s unpatriotic” and who has a six-year-old’s grasp of geography — with a coked-up, psychotic naivety, his life-philosophy the perfectly, and necessarily, simple: “Be a doer, not a don’t-er.”

With his victim Tony Shalhoub’s revolting self-made millionaire — a man prone to statements such as, “You know who invented salad? Poor people” — Daniel’s dimwit accomplices are portrayed with joyful knowingness by Anthony Mackie and Dwayne Johnson. The former thinks he’s a stud, yet has a penis made useless by steroid abuse. The latter thinks he’s a born-again Christian but is actually a psychopath. Both manage to make Daniel look like Einstein.

The movie is loads of fun, inventive and sharp when it’s introducing us to its brainless musketeers, but then gets flabby once the story proper kicks in. This is particularly true in a middle third that can’t seem to decide what point it is trying to make and which will do nothing to convince the Bay detractors that he’s capable of making a movie without sticking a camera up some hot girl’s skirt.

It’s a shame, because for the most part there is plenty to like, and it’s proof that even when not operating under gargantuan budgets and manipulating giant robots, Bay has an eye for the spectacular and an ear for the anarchic. It’s Bayhem on a budget. But Bayhem all the same. And Amen to that.

Michael Bay goes back to a Bad Boys budget and a big boys rating, for a true-life crime story thats inconsistent and frenetic, but also funny and wilfully outrageous.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

heeldavid

Jul 26, 2014

This film is too over the top and very crazy, it's not as explosive as Michael Bay's action flicks but it's just another crime film that tries to get out of the action range but Ed Harris puts on a nice performance.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

NickTheCritick

Apr 26, 2022

What should I say about this movie? The rating may be more indicative than any word I can say.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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