Pain & Gain (2013)

[Buzz201]

Originally Posted by chris_sc77

I am guessing that is what will be on the Special Edition releasing in the US in December. Unless there is a commentary or two included as well those features are not nearly enough for me to buy it and I will still be sticking with my UV Vudu version.

That's only what has been submitted to the BBFC so far. Aside from an Audio Descriptive version of the film, but that's not really of any interest.

More material will have be submitted (like the film itself, which has only been rated for theatrical and not home video release), so there may be more bonus material left to come.

[BryanMatthew]

Hey everyone! I checked to see if this was already covered in the thread, but I did not find anything.

I recently watched the original Pain & Gain release and noticed something that appears off in the video presentation. I'm not sure whether it's an editing mistake or something wrong with the transfer, but hopefully someone can help me here.

@ 1:52:19 - 1:52:20, when Mark Wahlberg's character is in the speed boat heading to Nassau, Bahamas, there is a large black spot that moves into the upper right-hand corner of the 2.40:1 image and then it moves out of the picture after about 1 second. The black spot almost looks like it's the edge of the camera lens (from the above helicopter that's filming the boat) because it's curved in a concave manner.

Can anyone help me out here?

[JOHN MFN D.]

I just came to the realisation that Pain & Gain may be the BEST movie ever. That is all.

[eiknarf]

Originally Posted by JOHN MFN D.

I just came to the realisation that Pain & Gain may be the BEST movie ever. That is all.

Is it really that good? That fun?
I gotta see this already. Damn.

[MasterChief3624]

Originally Posted by eiknarf

Is it really that good? That fun?
I gotta see this already. Damn.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the best movie ever, it is genuinely fantastic with a great pace and lots of entertainment value.

[Extremis]

Originally Posted by MasterChief3624

While I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the best movie ever, it is genuinely fantastic with a great pace and lots of entertainment value.

He treats the characters like animals in order to garner cheap laughs. It's offensive to its audience on all levels.

[MasterChief3624]

Originally Posted by Extremis

He treats the characters like animals in order to garner cheap laughs. It's offensive to its audience on all levels.

It's offensive to you as an audience member, maybe, but not to me. Despite the sensitive subject matter, I did appreciate Michael Bay having the courage to make this more of a dark comedy than a serious psychological study on the criminal mind. I feel like it worked much better like this than if he tried to make it a more serious movie.

I was hoping for it to be a more serious film, but was worried because a clip I saw was playing itself for laughs. But after seeing the movie and giving it a chance, I was happy to find that the movie balances dark comedy with drama and seriousness. The music helps a lot with that.

I understand how it would be offensive to some people, and I respect your opinion. But Pain & Gain really is an excellent movie to me. I just wouldn't consider it the best movie ever as I said in that previous post

[Extremis]

Originally Posted by MasterChief3624

It's offensive to you as an audience member, maybe, but not to me. Despite the sensitive subject matter, I did appreciate Michael Bay having the courage to make this more of a dark comedy than a serious psychological study on the criminal mind. I feel like it worked much better like this than if he tried to make it a more serious movie.

I was hoping for it to be a more serious film, but was worried because a clip I saw was playing itself for laughs. But after seeing the movie and giving it a chance, I was happy to find that the movie balances dark comedy with drama and seriousness. The music helps a lot with that.

I understand how it would be offensive to some people, and I respect your opinion. But Pain & Gain really is an excellent movie to me. I just wouldn't consider it the best movie ever as I said in that previous post

A movie many people see as similar is the recent Scorsese picture, The Wolf of Wall Street, which consistently treated it's despicable characters a human beings. Pain & Gain treated it's characters like dumb children with simplistic motivations. At no point, even when Bay specifically told me that this was real, believed any of this or any of the characters portrayed. The film treats the audience like a group of thirteen-year-olds, it's clear target audience. Bay lacks the compassion for the human condition, so instead of showing people as people, he's shows them as offensive stenotypes, in the name of comedy.

It's subject matter wasn't the problem for me, it was everything else.

[MasterChief3624]

Originally Posted by Extremis

A movie many people see as similar is the recent Scorsese picture, The Wolf of Wall Street, which consistently treated it's despicable characters a human beings. Pain & Gain treated it's characters like dumb children with simplistic motivations. At no point, even when Bay specifically told me that this was real, believed any of this or any of the characters portrayed. The film treats the audience like a group of thirteen-year-olds, it's clear target audience. Bay lacks the compassion for the human condition, so instead of showing people as people, he's shows them as offensive stenotypes, in the name of comedy.

It's subject matter wasn't the problem for me, it was everything else.

The main characters were treated as idiots because that's what they are. Ed Harris' character, though? He was great! I think as small as his part was, he was very well-developed and mature for a character.

I also think Tony Shalhoub's character was done well in that department. He was written as being a douche, but still had depth. Of course the main characters, the Sun Gym gang, were not written as the deepest characters, since they were despicable. I also think it was because Michael Bay knew he couldn't write a movie where he gives depth to the villains, so he wanted to go the opposite way.

The Wolf of Wall Street had 3 hours to develop characters and the whole movie was a character arc for many of them (mostly DiCaprio and Hill). That was a character study and a very well-written examination of greed and the decadence of money. It was not made to be an entertaining dark comedy that was there mostly for entertainment.

You're comparing grapes to bananas. Martin Scorsese has a decidedly surer hand in directing and he makes movies with more depth. Michael Bay is generally the go-to guy for mindless action movies with lots of explosions. While Bay doesn't come close to Scorsese in terms of prowess, I do think you're not being as fair about him as you should be. For a guy that makes either boring dramas or mindless explosion-laced popcorn flicks, Michael Bay does a pretty stellar job with Pain & Gain. I don't think there was one explosion in Pain & Gain, the film still moved along at a quick pace, and despite your thoughts on all the characters being one-dimensional for the purpose of laughs (I will say Anthony Mackie's character is quite a good indicator of that opinion), I still feel that the ones that called for development received it.

Michael Bay had a different intent when making Pain & Gain than Martin Scorsese did with Wolf of Wall Street. On the surface, you could say they're both movies depicting despicable human beings that let greed get to their hearts and heads, but I think they were completely different takes on a similar core theme, and they both did an excellent job depicting what they set out to depict.

I love Pain & Gain, you don't. I shouldn't love Pain & Gain. It shouldn't have been as good as it was to me. But I still love it. The Wolf of Wall Street was amazing, though, I guess we can agree on that. Only thing I didn't like was the darker part of the movie when

[Show spoiler]Jordan punches his wife in the stomach... that whole scene made me feel so sick and horrible. I didn't smile for the rest of the movie. It was just... horrible

But other than that, it was a brilliant movie that was likely the best screenplay of the year. One of those rare 3-hour movies that felt more like an hour and a half than the full 3!

[Extremis]

Originally Posted by MasterChief3624

The main characters were treated as idiots because that's what they are. Ed Harris' character, though? He was great! I think as small as his part was, he was very well-developed and mature for a character.

I also think Tony Shalhoub's character was done well in that department. He was written as being a douche, but still had depth. Of course the main characters, the Sun Gym gang, were not written as the deepest characters, since they were despicable. I also think it was because Michael Bay knew he couldn't write a movie where he gives depth to the villains, so he wanted to go the opposite way.

The Wolf of Wall Street had 3 hours to develop characters and the whole movie was a character arc for many of them (mostly DiCaprio and Hill). That was a character study and a very well-written examination of greed and the decadence of money. It was not made to be an entertaining dark comedy that was there mostly for entertainment.

You're comparing grapes to bananas. Martin Scorsese has a decidedly surer hand in directing and he makes movies with more depth. Michael Bay is generally the go-to guy for mindless action movies with lots of explosions. While Bay doesn't come close to Scorsese in terms of prowess, I do think you're not being as fair about him as you should be. For a guy that makes either boring dramas or mindless explosion-laced popcorn flicks, Michael Bay does a pretty stellar job with Pain & Gain. I don't think there was one explosion in Pain & Gain, the film still moved along at a quick pace, and despite your thoughts on all the characters being one-dimensional for the purpose of laughs (I will say Anthony Mackie's character is quite a good indicator of that opinion), I still feel that the ones that called for development received it.

Michael Bay had a different intent when making Pain & Gain than Martin Scorsese did with Wolf of Wall Street. On the surface, you could say they're both movies depicting despicable human beings that let greed get to their hearts and heads, but I think they were completely different takes on a similar core theme, and they both did an excellent job depicting what they set out to depict.

I love Pain & Gain, you don't. I shouldn't love Pain & Gain. It shouldn't have been as good as it was to me. But I still love it. The Wolf of Wall Street was amazing, though, I guess we can agree on that. Only thing I didn't like was the darker part of the movie when

[Show spoiler]Jordan punches his wife in the stomach... that whole scene made me feel so sick and horrible. I didn't smile for the rest of the movie. It was just... horrible

But other than that, it was a brilliant movie that was likely the best screenplay of the year. One of those rare 3-hour movies that felt more like an hour and a half than the full 3!

Both directors have drastic differences in their perception of what cinema is. At least Scorsese has respect for his audience.

[MasterChief3624]

Originally Posted by Extremis

Both directors have drastic differences in their perception of what cinema is. At least Scorsese has respect for his audience.

Okay.

[xander]

Originally Posted by MasterChief3624

Thank you for concisely revising what my main point was with your first sentence

I think it's apparent with that second sentence, though, that you are just here to moan about how trashy Michael Bay is and how masterful Martin Scorsese is. Your avatar doesn't help much with alleviating your apparent bias, either. :\

Guy's a constant downer, and generally a pretentious one at that. Just ignore him.

[Extremis]

Originally Posted by MasterChief3624

Thank you for concisely revising what my main point was with your first sentence

I think it's apparent with that second sentence, though, that you are just here to moan about how trashy Michael Bay is and how masterful Martin Scorsese is. Your avatar doesn't help much with alleviating your apparent bias, either. :\

You don't need to compare Pain & Gain to anyone of anything to see it's overall attack on intelligence.

I'm simply a movie-goer who's sick of seeing sub-par films that accomplish little in exploring what they're supposed to.

[MasterChief3624]

Originally Posted by xander

Guy's a constant downer, and generally a pretentious one at that. Just ignore him.

Haha, will do.

[Extremis]

lol can't seem to discuss movies on a movie forum

[Black Sabbath]

Continually bashing a movie over and over in various ways in it's respective thread isn't discussing it lol

I loved this movie. Easily in my Top 5 of the year.

[FilmBufffff]

I really wanted to like Pain & Gain but instead of feeling dramatic or realistic in any way Michael Bay opted to go the dark comedy route which would be fine if it was actually funny or dark but it's not. It felt like a cartoon, like if all the action scenes from Transformers were taken out and all you had left were two hours of Bay's awful characters and dialogue.

And all this is coming from someone who has The Rock at #5 on his Top Ten movies ever! I can see what Bay was going for with Pain & Gain but I feel he completely missed the mark. I'll usually give movies I didn't like a re-watch just to see if I was wrong the first time but with this I just don't ever feel like seeing it ever again. I really hope that after TF4 he'll go back to his roots and pull off another great action film like The Rock or Bad Boys, hell I'd even settle for a Bad Boys 2 or The Island.

[Extremis]

Originally Posted by Black Sabbath

Continually bashing a movie over and over in various ways in it's respective thread isn't discussing it lol

I loved this movie. Easily in my Top 5 of the year.

I can't say I'm shocked.

[E5CAP3 ART15T]

Silly people who hate Michael Bay. Had this been directed by an unknown it would be praised. I think this movie and its comedy works because during the whole movie you're not exactly rooting for the bad guys. They are funny but not really likable. Tony Shalhoub's character wasn't someone to love but you felt sorry for what they do to him. And it's the performances for me that I think is the top reason why I like this movie and it has great replay value. Wahlberg really has great comedy chops as does Anthony Mackie. Dwayne Johnson here was also funny. Ed Harris is obviously great in everything and I personally love Tony Shalhoub.

[Buzz201]

Originally Posted by E5CAP3 ART15T

Silly people who hate Michael Bay. Had this been directed by an unknown it would be praised. I think this movie and its comedy works because during the whole movie you're not exactly rooting for the bad guys. They are funny but not really likable. Tony Shalhoub's character wasn't someone to love but you felt sorry for what they do to him. And it's the performances for me that I think is the top reason why I like this movie and it has great replay value. Wahlberg really has great comedy chops as does Anthony Mackie. Dwayne Johnson here was also funny. Ed Harris is obviously great in everything and I personally love Tony Shalhoub.

My understanding was that people were offended by the treatment of the victim, Victor Kershaw, with the film apparently strongly arguing he "deserves" it (with some stuff being altered to play that up) and the way in which it trivialized their assault and kidnap of who was essentially an innocent man, rather than the fact it follows the bad guys...

Although I have heard some complaints about a shot directed upskirt of a dead woman...