Don't listen to the negative reviews

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Blistering performances.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

...just ended up being a bit violent/bloody for my taste, that's all....

Pain and gain is the true story of Daniel Lugo, portrayed by Mark Wahlberg, a likable criminal with genius plan to get rich with his two partners in crime, which horribly backfires. His two accomplices are Paul Doyle, Played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Adrian Doorbal, who is played by Anthony Mackie. This film is a true classic crime, drama with bits of comedy. Pain & Gain was directed by Michael Bay, which you may categorise him as someone who makes bad movies such as Transformers which contained an overhaul of explosions and special effects, who changes his stance on films completely with a crime comedy, with little special effects and explosions. When I first went to watch the film I judged it all wrong. I thought it would be another comedy that wasn't funny and a waste of time. But convinced by my friends to watch it, I can safely say it was worth every penny. I think the best part of the film was the phenomenal acting by Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson & Anthony Mackie. Portraying the characters amazingly. It felt like I was watching the real thing. Dwayne Johnson fits the role Of Paul Doyle perfectly, who is a body builder but a very religious man with a good conscience. Michael bay did a really superb jobs in the casting. The only criticism of the film is that it has a very slow build to the action and the drama. But it's a needed build with the films, so when watching remember to patient and accept the long but great build. The main point of the film was to re-enact the true events but to keep the audience entertained, as well as get a few laughs on the way. A film that truly won't disappoint. My overall rating of the film is 9 stars out of 10. Only because I felt all the build was not need some of it was there for no reason, and could have been a shorter film and could have kept the audience entertained for the whole film.

The reason this movie is entertaining from beginning to end is because everything you see, no matter how gritty or horrible or played for obvious or broad effect, is undeniably interesting. The dichotomy of Lugo's character alone is so strange that you can't look away. He has to be so smart to implement a plan with this many moving parts and dangerous in the pursuit of wealth, and yet so lazy and entitled to steal that wealth rather than earn it.Starring Mark Walhberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie, Pain & Gain is far from art-house material, but if you go into a Michael Bay film seriously expecting a Coen brothers film. It's wild and engrossing and, it bears repeating, completely true. Based on a true story and Bay ensures to remind the viewers and several point in the film that it is indeed based on a true story.

The last few years have been somewhat kind to the cinema meat-head. Channing Tatum has found his niche bringing sweetness and humanity to the square-jawed jock with roles in 21 Jump Street (2012) and Foxcatcher (2014), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon managing to find a heart beneath it's slick-haired, vest-wearing and gym- obsessed protagonist. Pain & Gain attempts to take a satirical swipe at the type of people who take pictures of themselves after a workout session and plaster their achievements all over social media, as three idiotic and steroid-pumped opportunists decide to take what they feel is owed to them in life. It claims to be based on a shocking true story, although the plot takes extreme liberties with the real-life events.Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is sculptured to perfection. He works at the gym where he feels he can help give anybody the body they want, and has helped his boss John Mese (Rob Corddry) turn the place around with a few smart business decisions. But his efforts have not given him the lifestyle he wants - a grand mansion, a top-of-the- range sports car, babes hanging off his massive arms, and every other materialistic pleasure life has to offer. He begins to lust after the kind of life lived by Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), and so hatches a plan to extort the man for every penny he has after being inspired by motivational speaker Jonny Wu (Ken Jeong).Along with the steroid-addled and impotency-stricken Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), Daniel recruits enormous ex-convict and cocaine addict Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) to assist him in kidnapping and torturing Kershaw until he signs over all of his assets to them. The plan works, but they fail to kill Kershaw after attempting to run him over numerous times. However, nobody believes his story of three imbeciles pulling off such a crime, choosing instead to believe it to be the result of dodgy dealings with criminal organisations. So Daniel, Paul and Adrian are allowed to live the lifestyle they have fantasised about, until they decide it isn't enough and plan to shake down smut peddler Frank Griga (Michael Rispoli), while Kershaw hires private investigator Ed DuBois (Ed Harris) to help him take back his property.It's quite a change of genre for director Michael Bay, who has spent the last few years making billions at the box-office with huge explosions and CGI robots. While Pain & Gain does demonstrate a previously unseen knack for black comedy, Bay does not possess the necessary skills to tell a story of murder and greed with the required intelligence or satire. When we should be laughing at these preening narcissists, Bay films them with his usual sickly sheen as if to admire them, obscuring the point the film is, I think, trying to make. The decision to play the film mainly for laughs is also in somewhat bad taste. While watching a coked-up Johnson remove a victim's fingerprints by grilling their dismembered hands on a barbecue is the stuff of black comedy gold, you have to remember that there were real victims in this story, and it all happened quite recently.The main positive is that the performances are all spot-on. Wahlberg is perfect as a man who values his self-worth by his possessions, and Johnson restrains himself enough in a role that could have spilled over into complete farce. A lot of the film is in fact farcical, and not in a good way. Bay insists of filling the screen with fancy wide-angled shots and outdated screen text, when a little dose of subtlety would have worked better. Yet despite its flaws and a bloated sub-plot involving Doorbal's relationship with the doctor who is injecting his penis with the necessary drugs to make it work properly (Rebel Wilson), Pain & Gain is pretty entertaining, and amusing enough to hope that Bay may think about taking a different direction to his usual blockbuster drivel (although he did make the appalling Transformers: Age of Extinction after this).