"Pain & Gain" (2013)

Of all the working directors, arguably the one who would seem the least well-suited for making a satire is Michael Bay. Bay has made a career out of making low substance action films. He's come to represent bankrupt film culture, with ADHD editing, thin characters and thin plots and an emphasis on action over narrative. But somehow all these qualities make him well-suited for making Pain & Gain, a broad critique of, well, the kind of people who worship at the altar of Michael Bay films. It's a film about the type of people who surely must think Armageddon is a certified masterpiece, who party and drink like it's their life mission, and vainly, unhealthily work-out. Bay cuts back on his typically excessive action, but maintains his distinctive, hyperactive style, and uses it to poke fun at the meat-head American subculture -- and is legitimately funny in the process. But though its jabs are often coarse and simple, the film is weirdly sympathetic towards its protagonists Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) and Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), bodybuilders who want their piece of the American pie but feel like they've been left behind. It recognizes their stupidity, and increasingly self-destructive and misguided actions they take to make bank -- namely kidnapping a wealthy narcissistic client of the gym they work at. Yet it also understands what's led them to obsess over their appearances and to desire success and wealth at any cost. It's a vulgar and violent look at the fallacy of the American Dream. The film seems willfully, intentionally designed to be divisive, consistently stooping to the same level of idiocy and self-indulgence as its characters -- cheap, childish, broad humor and loud, brash stylistic choices -- and often losing its intended message in the process. Yet there's still an odd vibrancy to the film, and it's undoubtedly the best work Bay has done in ages.

 Grade: ★★★