Pain & Gain Reviews

Michael Bay's lurid crime comedy Pain & Gain is as excessively pumped-up as you would imagine, a berserk, overblown action movie on steroids.

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Pain & Gain is Michael Bay's best film yet, fusing his high-octane and in-your-face directing style with pitch black comedy that makes for the funniest film of 2013.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

This is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson straining every sinew to deliver the heavy duty performance of his career.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Might this be the best Michael Bay film ever? We know what you're thinking. But we mean it in a good way.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The closest Michael Bay's natural style for flash really feels like an organic extension and expression of the material's narrative and characters rather than mere surface gloss.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

The performances are first class and help make you warm to the lunkheaded trio against your better judgement.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The uneasy blend of comedy and ultra-violence will turn some viewers off but, if you can stomach it, you may find yourself curiously entertained.

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There's something inspired about putting Michael Bay in charge of a brazen action-comedy about gym-pumped knuckleheads who screw up their own criminal masterplan most royally.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Spirited and very funny, this movie should actually be rather disturbing since it's a true story about torture and murder.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

A scabrous satirical swipe at not only the knuckle-headed machismo the director seems so enthralled by, but also at an America crippled by consumerism.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Labelling a Michael Bay movie thoughtful is like calling Transformers cerebral...but this is a lot more stimulating than we've come to expect even if reverts to shoot 'em up type by the end of its pumped up running time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

A bleak, bitter, wicked pleasure that holds up the underpinnings of modern America - self-help, Jesus, and violence - for ridicule.

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The first hour may be Bay's career high point: it's fast, freaky, gloriously tasteless and startlingly pointed in its attacks on western insecurity, shallowness and greed.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Ultimately, cinema is a form of entertainment and this picture does nothing but entertain.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Michael Bay goes back to a Bad Boys budget and a big boys' rating, for a true-life crime story that's inconsistent and frenetic, but also funny and wilfully outrageous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Without having to worry about giant robots or special effects so much, director Michael Bay gets the chance to properly exercise his talent for film comedy, a quality that laces a lot of his films and that too many critics are loathe to acknowledge.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

It's social commentary so slick and scathing letting it wash over you feels like getting lubed and chafed at the same time.

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An entertaining spin on macho theatrics with amusing lead performances and a bizarre true story to tell. Definitely worth the effort.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Like all of Bay's work, it's over-the-top, brash and exhausting to watch. But like the lifestyle its characters aspire to, there's an allure too.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Michael Bay, burdened with glorious purpose, pours his everything into Pain & Gain; the closest thing to an indie-spirited passion project he will likely ever make... It works. I can't believe this thing actually works.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5