Pain & Gain Reviews
Top CriticThough this story needs no embellishment, Bay can't help himself.
The Playlist
Pain & Gain fails at being an entertaining and ridiculously fun Michael Bay movie and curdles into something much more tone deaf and obnoxious. It isn't necessarily Michael Bay's worst movie, but it might be his most overworked and least effective.
Full Review
| Original Score: D+
Bloomberg News
Bay doesn't have the operatic panache of Quentin Tarantino. At well over two hours, "Pain and Gain" should have gone for lean and mean.
ScreenRant
Pain & Gain isn't a bad movie but it is a flat adaptation - only telling the story of the Sun Gym Gang without adding worthwhile insight (or many laughs).
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
FoxNews.com
For his first post-"Transformers" production, Bay goes a little too far at making stupidity and violence appear alluring and sexy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
CraveOnline
For the first time in a hugely successful career, he showed a sliver of something more sophisticated, and for that, I applaud the man for the first time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5.5/10
Schmoes Know
Some of Bay's go-to tricks actually inject some juice into film, and I'll at least admit that no one polishes a turd like Michael Bay. But does it still have to smell so bad?
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Schmoes Know
I didn't hate watching this movie, it held my interest. It's way too long at over two hours, and even if it was a breezy 85 minute joyride, it would still have that fatal flaw: Michael Bay is the guy calling the shots.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.3/5
You can't thread a needle this fine with a script filtered through Bay's puerile id.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Overlong, dull and dimwitted, Pain & Gain ends up fetishizing the warped muscle culture it set out to lampoon.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
Las Vegas Weekly
The story is too inherently fascinating for Bay to completely screw it up, but he comes close.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Daily Film Fix
What starts out as an irreverent comedy with action elements turns into lurid, unpleasant masochistic viewing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Bay only knows how to pitch his movies at one level: all bombast, all the time. And you can't help but feel that he kind of admires these murderous morons' sloping-brow sense of joie de vivre.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
After an hour of "Pain & Gain," it felt more like "Pain & Pain."
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Not only hollow and assaultive, but frenzied, madly violent and skullnumbingly loud.
Times-Picayune
Michael Bay's comedy is energetic and edgy, but the fact that it's all based on a real-life tragedy mutes much of the comic potential.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Movie Chambers
"Pain & Gain" is the type of film that makes you feel like need a shower after you watch it.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
GeekNation
"Pain and Gain" is Bay's best film, but we're judging on a curve that includes a talking big rig lecturing audiences about human rights and two Miami cops invading Cuba, so that's ultimately not saying much.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
St. Paul Pioneer Press
It's stylish, but there's not much there.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Bay ... doesn't seem to realize the film has gotten away from him. He's still trying to maintain the same jaunty tone even after the content's gone gruesome.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
