Michael Bay made a movie about bodybuilders who kidnap a rich man, and it is not the movie the subject deserves. Pain & Gain runs 130 minutes. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie as the Sun Gym gang, three Miami men who beat and burned and stole their way toward a version of the American dream. The tagline promises that “their American dream is bigger than yours.” The film delivers on the size and not much else.
Trailer, via Paramount Pictures.
Inside the Sun Gym in 1990s Miami
The setup is lean and mean. Daniel Lugo, played by Wahlberg, manages the Sun Gym. He trains Victor Kershaw, played by Tony Shalhoub, and he wants what Kershaw has. So he recruits two accomplices: Adrian Doorbal, played by Mackie, a trainer rendered impotent by steroids and desperate for the money to fix it, and Paul Doyle, played by Johnson, an ex-con and born-again Christian who is slipping back into drug use.
The film is loosely based on a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles by Pete Collins. The real gang was convicted of kidnapping, extortion, torture and murder in Miami in the mid-1990s. The title is a play on the fitness adage “no pain, no gain.” That pun is the whole thesis, and Pain & Gain never gets past it.
Bay directs. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote the script. The film premiered in Miami on April 11, 2013, before Paramount Pictures released it in theatres on April 26.
What the Gang Actually Does
The plot moves in a straight line. Lugo is inspired to be a “doer” by motivational speaker and playboy Jonny Wu, played by Ken Jeong. He decides to extort Kershaw. He brings in Doorbal. He manipulates Doyle into the plan. Doyle, who had been staying at a church after leaving prison, assaults the priest at the church for making homosexual advances on him and becomes more tangled with the gang.
The Sun Gym gang kidnaps Kershaw and takes him to a small warehouse. Kershaw identifies Lugo, but the scheme proceeds as planned. Under duress, Kershaw makes calls to explain his disappearance and transfers his assets to Lugo. Sun Gym owner John Mese, played by Rob Corddry, is bribed to notarize documents in Kershaw’s absence.
Then the gang tries to kill him. They stage a drunk driving crash, burn his car, and run him over. Kershaw survives. He wakes in a hospital and tells the police. They dismiss his story — because of his manner, his blood alcohol level, and because he is from Colombia, a South American country known for drug trafficking.
Kershaw contacts Ed Du Bois, III, played by Ed Harris, a semi-retired private investigator. Du Bois warns him to leave the hospital. Kershaw takes the advice just as the gang arrives, and hides in a cheap motel. The gang members spoil themselves with his riches. Lugo takes over Kershaw’s car and home.
A Cast Doing More Than the Script Asks
The performances are the strongest thing here, and they are not strong enough to save it. Wahlberg plays Lugo as a man with no interior life and no doubt, which is the right read and also a dead end. Johnson is the most interesting piece of casting — a movie star known for likability playing a man whose faith and whose drug habit are pulling him apart. Pain & Gain gives him the struggle and not the resolution.
Mackie has the least to do and does it. Shalhoub, as the victim, has to sell terror and humiliation and does. Harris arrives late and gives the film its only steady hand.
Then there is the supporting bench:
- Bar Paly as Sorina Luminita
- Rebel Wilson as Ramona Eldridge
- Ken Jeong as Johnny Wu
- Michael Rispoli as Frank Griga
- Keili Lefkovitz as Krisztina Furton
- Vivi Pineda as Detective Haworth
None of them get enough room to become people. They are types, and the film treats them as types.
Where the Black Comedy Goes Wrong
Pain & Gain is a black comedy crime film, and the black comedy is where it goes wrong. The real events include torture and murder. The film plays them for laughs and for muscle. Bay shoots Miami like a commercial for a product that does not exist, all sun and sweat and slow motion, and the style is genuinely his. The problem is that the style has no floor. When the gang runs Kershaw over and leaves him for dead, the film does not know whether it wants you to laugh, flinch, or cheer.
It manages none of the three.
The historical inaccuracies drew criticism on release, and they are not small. The film changes names and bends events.
Counting the Money
The film was a commercial success. It grossed $86 million worldwide against a $26 million production budget. That is a real return, and it tells you what the studio wanted and got. Pain & Gain was never trying to be a document. It was trying to be a ride.
Reviews were mixed. The script, the direction and the performances drew praise. The inaccuracies drew criticism. Both reactions are fair, and neither one settles the question of whether the film should exist in this form.
A True Crime Saga With No Spine Left
The Sun Gym gang is a good story. Ex-convict bodybuilders, a Miami gym, a kidnapping that turns into a murder attempt that fails, a victim nobody believes, a private investigator who does. That is a crime saga with a spine. Pain & Gain has the spine and keeps cutting it for a joke.
The film’s best idea is that Lugo is not a criminal mastermind but a man who read a self-help book and decided he was owed something. That idea is in there. It is buried under 130 minutes of Bay doing Bay.
Why 4.5 Is the Right Score
Pain & Gain is watchable and it is not good. The cast is overqualified. The direction is confident and empty. The script has a few sharp turns and no center. The film wants to be a satire of American appetite and ends up an advertisement for it.
The 4.5 out of 10 is the right score. It is not a disaster — there is craft here, and Johnson and Shalhoub are doing real work. But Pain & Gain takes a true story of kidnapping, extortion, torture and murder and makes it weightless. That is the failure. Not that it is offensive. That it is forgettable.
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