Pain & Gain Reviews
Reno News and Review
While I will always hate Bay, this is actually an okay movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.75/5
Three Movie Buffs
A dark comedy about muscles, murder, and the American dream.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Top CriticI strongly recommend [it] if you don't overvalue taste, subtlety, and moral decency. I liked it.
Houston Press
Bay could've paid for Pain & Gain with the spare hundreds he keeps around for cocaine straws.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
WaffleMovies.com
Full of great performances, and, sometimes, is amazingly compelling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Examiner.com
With its over the top beefcake humor and featuring Dwayne Johnson's most impressive acting to date, Pain & Gain is so much fun because it's so crass and so ludicrous.
Full Review
| Original Score: 7.5/10
7M Pictures
an R-rated, steroid-fueled Looney Tunes cartoon
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Now [Bay] hits new levels of both artistry and sleaziness in the black comedy Pain & Gain, which I strongly recommend if you don't overvalue taste, subtlety, and moral decency. I liked it.
CraveOnline
I loved Pain & Gain. I thought it was great. It shows that if you give Michael Bay a good script, he can kill it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 8/10
TV Guide's Movie Guide
It's wild and engrossing and, it bears repeating, completely true. You can look up the entire, stranger-than-fiction news story that it's so painstakingly based on in the Miami New Times -- but do yourself a favor and see the movie first.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Toledo Blade
There's undeniable humor in this comedy of errors of three bumbling criminals, and Wahlberg, Johnson, and Mackie strike the right tone in their performances.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
CinemaBlend.com
In walking the impossible tightrope of violent satire, Bay succeeds by calling up one of cinema's most powerful and least-understood languages: the relationship the audience has with the people onscreen before the film even begins.
Kaplan vs. Kaplan
It's violent, gory, sexist, homophobic and politically incorrect --- and also very, very funny.
Tri-City Herald
Somebody's real life murder should not be this much fun. But it is. And who knew the Rock would ever be this good an actor.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Television Without Pity
For the first half, Bay is completely dialed into this material, his frat boy sense of humor and overblown visual sensibility complimenting the story and setting.
It may be the best movie Michael Bay's ever made. And suggests that, if you just kept his toys put away a little longer, someday he might even make a better one.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
AskMen.com
For Michael Bay fans, Pain & Gain may be his masterpiece, where the director's collision of testosterone-fueled action and blunt wits is perfectly in keeping with the subject.
Full Review
| Original Score: 69/100
Flixist.com
For most directors this film would be high octane, but for Bay it's practically a three hour art house film showing a flower blooming in excruciatingly slow motion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 70/100
Eclipse Magazine
Bay needs to get credit for going outside of his comfort zone and making a surprisingly small, dark, quirky, funny movie. There is a real Coen Brothers vibe.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
