Reviews for this film from our members:
- Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: There are funny moments, particularly in the first act. But it’s still a pretty ugly movie.
- Luke Bonanno @ DVDizzy.com
- Excerpt: Pain & Gain confirms what the casting of the Transformers series suggested: Michael Bay is clearly a fan of the Coen Brothers.
- Tim Brayton @ Antagony & Ecstasy
- Excerpt: Covered in an impenetrable layer of irony that evinces the smuggest imaginable contempt for the characters.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Things play out like an R-rated, steroid-fueled Looney Tunes cartoon. Sure, it’s entertaining at times, but it’s the film equivalent of chugging three Red Bulls and then trying to play Jenga.
- [New – 10/10] | Samuel Castro @ Ochoymedio.info [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Michael Bay hace una película rara para él: tiene sentido, cuenta bien una historia y tiransmite una que otra idea
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …only sustains itself long enough for the lads to accomplish the first step of their plot before devolving into a morass of overload, dry stretches, Bay’s predilection for cheap titillation and behavior too ugly for fun.
- Edwin Davies @ A Mighty Fine Blog
- Excerpt: Pain & Gain is crass, aesthetically, morally and comedically bankrupt. It’s a torrid, unpleasant journey through the life of three morons who tried to get rich through acts of cold-blooded murder, re-imagined as a knockabout romp full of toilet humour, upskirt shots and incessant slow-motion. In short, it’s the best film that Michael Bay has made in the last ten years, and easily one of the worst you are likely to see this year.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: Here the method is the madness—vein-popping, muscular camera work not only informs but mirrors the air-headed machinations of PAIN & GAIN’s dunderhead gym-rats.
- Carlos del Río @ El rincón de Carlos del Río [Spanish]
- Excerpt: Bay ha juntado un poco de los hermanos Coen (por ese guión tan demencial), un poco de Tarantino (por esas situaciones escabrosas tan divertidas y el tono que tiene) y un poco de Oliver Stone (por su estilo visual y su carga satírica), y ha dado en el blanco.
- M. Enois Duarte @ High-Def Digest.com
- Excerpt: Bay bombards his audience with his usual repertoire of flamboyantly dizzying camerawork and a wild, scorching palette that has the cast looking as if they’ve been baking for days. […] It’s a steroid-injected, testosterone-driven display of slow-motion action, half-circle tracking shots, and dramatic push-ins.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: This is sleazy, abrasive entertainment, and that’s a compliment without backhand.
- Kate Erbland @ Film School Rejects
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: In this quirky, chaotic, dunderhead comedy caper, too much pain is inflicted for little gain.
- Vadym Grygoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A bleak, bitter, wicked pleasure that holds up the underpinnings of modern America — self-help, Jesus, and violence — for ridicule.
- Dan Kelly @ Danland
- Excerpt: the success is more down to a trio of brilliant performances and a wonderful screenplay than anything Bay supplies directorially, but there’s no denying that his usual trademarks (frantic edits, sensory excess and rampant sexualisation) are put to appropriate use.
- Oktay Ege Kozak @ Oregon Herald
- Benjamin Kramer @ The Voracious Filmgoer
- Josh Larsen @ LarsenOnFilm.com
- Excerpt: I can’t help but wonder if Pain & Gain is the reason Michael Bay was put on this earth.
- Peter Martin @ Dallas Film Now
- Excerpt: Michael Bay explores a real-life story about Miami bodybuilders, circa the mid-1990s, with Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson on board. Does this tale of stupid criminals ring true?
- Brent McKnight @ Beyond Hollywood
- Excerpt: Pain & Gain is a Day-Glo, roid-rage explosion that will shrink your nards.
- Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: Although it could never be called dull, Michael Bay’s brash and in-your-face tale of bodybuilders biting off more than they can chew squanders almost all of its potential thanks to the director’s self-indulgent and casually misogynistic sensibilities.
- Simon Miraudo @ Quickflix
- Scott Nye @ CriterionCast
- Excerpt: So insane and incendiary, I’m genuinely in shock that a major studio financed and is releasing it. Would that all filmmakers used their clout to do something this big, bold, fierce, and accomplished.
- Frank Ochieng @ Yahoo! Voices Movies
- Excerpt: Needless to say, wane and strain outmuscles Pain & Gain.
- Jason Pirodsky @ Expats.cz
- Excerpt: The lower budget might have resulted in fewer explosions and less wall-to-wall action, but make no mistake: this is full-frontal Bay machismo overload, bursting at the seams with blood, sweat, muscles, and bimbos, coated in that slick 90s oily sheen and drenched in Miami heat.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: You don’t want an action comedy to cross the line and become an assault on the audience…but Michael Bay’s ‘Pain & Gain’ does precisely that.
