zondag 8 september 2013

Pain & Gain (2013)

Genre : Comedy/Action
Country : USA

Cast :
Mark Wahlberg : Daniel Lugo
Dwayne Johnson : Paul Doyle
Anthony Mackie : Adrian Doorbal
Tony Shalhoub : Victor Kershaw
Ed Harris : Ed Dubois

Director :
Michael Bay

Summary
Based on the true story of Daniel Lugo a Miami bodybuilder who wants to live the American dream. He would like to have the money that other people have. So he enlists the help of fellow bodybuilder Adrian Doorbal and ex-convict, Christian bodybuilder Paul Doyle. Their kidnapping and extortion scheme goes terribly wrong since they have muscles for brains and they're left to haphazardly try to hold onto the elusive American dream.

My opinion

You know why habit rhymes with rabbit? Because your life goes down a rabbit hole.
(Irrelevant quote from Lugo and an indication what to expect from this movie)

Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie and especially Dwayne Johnson in a movie about three body-builders who are involved in a kidnapping which they screw up completely.
A great action picture that can provide some distraction on a Saturday night. That's what I imagined since that was the only thing I knew about this movie. And judging the poster it could be an entertaining movie with three mindless hulks (Wahlberg in a lesser degree, but that's compensated by Johnson).

After fifteen minutes I actually began to wonder what I was watching and it seemed to me as if those 3 guys wanted to make an absurd comedy. With the emphasis on "seemed" because I really had to look hard to find the so called humor in this movie. It's nothing but three steroid inflated balloon heads experiencing slightly absurd situations. The situations and acts were more and more retarded as the movie progressed. The only positive was the excellent caricature of an arrogant businessman played by Tony Shalhoub. Even when his situation looked dire and hopeless, he still retained a big mouth.

The rest was bland, incomprehensible and totally unbelievable. Those three guys better just stick to decent hard-hitting action movies and as soon as they read the word comedy in a script, run it through the paper shredder. It was as unbelievable as a movie with Pee Wee Herman as an unbeatable action hero who defeats a complete horde of ferocious warriors. Apparently it should be an ironic satire. Apparently there's something wrong with my taste and interpretation, because I didn't see it like that at all. The fact that it was based on a true story puzzled me more. Was it really so or just an ironic untruth ?

Towards the end, I fell asleep for 5 minutes and eventually watched it till the end. I had nothing else to do.

Biggest plus in this corny movie was Bar Paly, Keili Lefkovitz and Vivi Pineda along with a battery of beautiful women sitting in sharply cut bikinis and swimsuits so you were repeatedly treated by dry-trained appetizing looking rosy bums. More of that and I certainly had watched the whole movie.

More or less funny : the whole problem of impotence and penis-problem of Anthony Mackie with those snappy one-liners regarding that.

Most boring item : Johnson shooting his big toe of his foot and the dog eventually nibbling on it.