Review of Pain & Gain (2013) by Kevin R — 17 Jul 2014

That's how it works. You give and you get back.

A group of body builders in Florida try to extort money from one of the body builder's trainees. They execute their plan surprisingly well, except at the end when they try to kill him, he survives the ordeal. Despite being broke and having his family and friends abandon him, the formerly rich trainee finds a private detective interested in his case and they will try to bring the body building gangsters down.

"You look like shit.".

"Yeah, well, I feel like I look great.".

Michael Bay, director of the Transformers 1-3, Bad Boys 1 & 2, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, The Island, and the upcoming Bad Boys 3, delivers Pain & Gain. The storyline for this picture is pretty intricate and well done. The script was obviously written/adjusted with the cast in mind, but the overall film was fun and unfolded well. The cast delivers solid performances and includes Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Ken Jeong, and Tony Shalhoub.

"I used to call my vag Michelle...".

This was a movie I was interested to see for some time and was happy to find Netflix recently added it to its online queue. I will say this was better than I anticipated and on par with Blow. There are some clever plot points here and use of characters. From what I've read, the characters in this movie are far off from the real life people (which is why the majority of the script seemed written for the actors); but overall, this is a nice addition to the genre that is borderline worth adding to your DVD collection.

"Believe you deserve it, and the universe will serve it!".

Grade: B.