REVIEW: PAIN & GAIN It’s easy to forget that Michael Bay has made some good movies Labor Day, Hatfield & McCoy Heritage Days, Pike County Bowl, Wednesday night trivia at Starters in Williamson, and, of course, fantasy football. With all of this madness going on this week, who has time to watch a movie? Umm ... oh yeah, guess that still means me. Not that I’m complaining though. I mean, after all, watching a movie requires me plopping down on a couch and doing nothing (which is one of many hobbies, by the way). So this week I decided to go with Pain & Gain. The Great Gatsby also came out this week, but since it’s over two-and-a-half hours long, I decided to stay away. Pain & Gain is a loosely-based on a true story film regarding the kidnapping, extortion and murder of several victims by a number of bodybuilders. Set in the mid-1990s and in Miami, Pain & Gain is an interesting movie overall, even if it does run a little too long. While the movie will remind you throughout that it’s still a true story, it is heavily fictionalized from the real events. Names are changed, characters are created for more effect and some of the events are also tweaked to make for a more entertaining movie. I have no problem with this process, except for the fact that Michael Bay wants you to believe that all the events in the movie are true. They are not and should be treated as fiction, even if there is a scene here and there that actually is factual. Normally, when I see Michael Bay’s name attached to anything, I’ll run the other way. I didn’t even bother with the second and third Transformers movies because I thought the first one was that bad. Aside from Bad Boys, which was his first feature film, you could throw the rest of his movies in the same landfill as the 1983 Atari video game, “E.T.” for all I care. But, to my surprise, Bay does a solid job with this one. Maybe it was because his budget was smaller, or because it was because he had a solid cast to work with. Either way, it’s his best film in almost two decades. The cast worked really well together. Mark Wahlberg and The Rock have great on-screen chemistry. Both do excellent jobs in Pain & Gain, with The Rock bringing a great amount of humor to the film. The additions of Tony Shalhoub, Rob Corddry, Rebel Wilson and Ken Jeong brought a little bit more intrigue to the cast. Ed Harris, who I’ve been down on for the last few years, actually turned in a solid performance as well. Maybe there’s still hope for Harris, just as long as we don’t see anything like Appaloosa in the future. The movie does tend to run a little longer than it should. It’s not that it felt dragged out too much, as the ending felt rushed based on how the rest of the movie flowed. Had they chopped roughly 10 minutes of useless scenes throughout the film, they would’ve had more time to focus on a better ending. Since Labor Day will always remind me of my dear friend Jeff Taylor (his birthday being September 3rd after all), I find it only fitting that I watch as much classic ECW wrestling as possible this week. Jeff was one of my dearest friends, and the closest thing I ever had to a little brother. We both loved ECW when it was originally out, and even had the privilege of watching it live back in 2000. I’ll never forget my dear friend and I know that all of his family and friends won’t either. I want to wish everyone a very safe and wonderful Labor Day weekend. There are plenty of activities going on in the area, so don’t be afraid to get out and have some fun! Pain & Gain (R) ................................................ B-
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:16:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015