Painfully Gained

If there’s one thing director Michael Bay knows, it’s how to excite people. For nearly twenty years, he has been devising methods to burst our collective eardrums and flash-fry our optical nerves with visual and aural verve, always striving to pack theaters with folks looking for their next fix of thrills and explosions and everything awesome. He’s also one of the most commercially successful directors in Hollywood, and while he has been known to occasionally back the wrong horse (does anybody remember The Island?) and his movies have never been truly good, his care spent on special effects and crowd-pleasing elements are a huge reason his legacy ought to remain intact.

But while he’s probably best-known right now for the computer-generated antics of his Transformers trilogy (with a fourth on the way), one might forget that he actually started off with more grounded action films like Bad Boys, which blended violence and comedy in such a unique way that it did much to create the modern action genre as we know it. Hence Pain & Gain, with his smallest budget in over a decade, which tells the insanely true story of bodybuilders and criminals Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg), Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), and Adrian Dorbal (Anthony Mackie). The Sun Gym Gang, as they became known, hatched and executed a plan to kidnap and rob Miami businessman Tony Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), eventually attempting to kill the man when the dirty business was concluded. But their fortune was not due to last, and their empire came crashing down not long after.

Just say No, kids...

This isn’t a typical Michal Bay production, relying less on gnarly explosions and more on character development to push the story forward. Unfortunately, the director’s biggest mistake was making the violent sociopaths herein the heroes in his tale. I’m not saying that bad guys cannot be considered heroes under the right circumstances; Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths was almost two hours of loveable crazies, and Richard Linklater’s Bernie made you root for a guilty murderer to get off scot free (and this was Jack Black, no less!). Bay’s problem is that this is a character-driven issue, and he’s just not a director who cares about his characters. You wing up hating just about everybody, whether they are the “heroes” or the “police” or anybody in between. Wahlberg and Mackie’s characters are so idiotic that you can’t help but shake your head at their incompetence and self-deception, not to mention their unlikely successes. Ed Harris’ private eye Ed Du Bois is dry and dull, and you’ll DEFINITELY hate Israeli actress Bar Paly as an immigrant exotic dancer cannot be understood half the time. You won’t even like Shalhoub as Kershaw, whom one character refers to as a “difficult victim”. The only person in this whole mess you’ll actually connect with is that of Paul Doyle (actually a composite of several real-life people), and that’s equal parts due to Johnson’s excellent performance and being an excellently-written role. You actually feel for Doyle, a recovering drug addict with a religious streak, who ends up joining the group and committing vile acts not through bad urges, but through desperation and a severe lack of options.

One of the few comedic successes

But the entire movie cannot be rested entirely on Johnson’s (and sparingly Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson’s) back, and it isn’t long until you’re clamoring for something – ANYTHING – to relieve the monotony. Bay’s strengths – explosions and pretty image – are thankfully intact, although limited in appearance. The director does a good job of capturing both the shiny and dingy sides of Miami, from the squeaky-clean tourist areas and luxury homes to the run-down neighborhoods and seedy warehouse districts. Of course, he became familiar with these areas from his work on Bad Boys and its sequel, and while things have probably changed in the time since, he still manages to use the area to the greatest cinematic effect. While many who praise Bay argue that it is his action sequences that set him apart, it’s not – his command of all things visual is his true strength, even if it’s not quite enough to make up for his other failings.

Money is not usually this bright.

One other nice aspect of Pain & Gain is how it – like many Bay productions – doesn’t take itself all that seriously. Though it amusingly purports to tell a true story (fact-checkers ought to have a field day with the script), Bay and company make full use of the nuttiness that occurred at the time, and the results are almost too crazy to be believed. And the insane part is that the scenes that you might consider too out there to possibly be real, the ones that make you laugh out loud due to their ridiculousness… ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Ironically, it’s the more normal parts of the story that were altered in order to make the characters more sympathetic. But while Bay perhaps failed in his final execution, one has to respect the wink and nod of being reminded during a particularly gruesome and comedic moment that, yes, “This is still based on a true story.”

You're not a real Miami resident without a racing dog.

But make no mistake; despite its occasional bits of amusement and a genuinely strong performance from Johnson, Bay’s return to more human fare is a painful exercise in just how much he has become reliant on giant robots to be successful. Pain & Gain is a mediocre, amateurish and thoroughly unnecessary attempt at forced relevance, both for the filmmakers and the subjects of their labors. Yes, it’s still better than many of the brain-dead macho violent movies released in 2013, but that line is more of a limbo bar than a high jump. Bay generally wants his movies to be awesome, but this one definitely doesn’t make it. Bay is not a character-driven director, and that’s simply the kind of filmmaker this title needed if it was going to be close to sufficiently entertaining.

Beware of Falling Bodies

Ah, the plight of the up-and-coming Australian actor. It seems that whenever a performer arrives in Hollywood from "down under", they enjoy a brief run on the big screen before fading into obscurity. If they're lucky, they can at least follow up their short-lived superstardom with sporadic appearances that pay the bills. Eric Bana has done a nice job following that path, and even though he has the talent do more than play secondary characters in second-rate films, that is his lot in life now. Chances of a new Mel Gibson appearing among the industry's rank and file seem far less likely nowadays, especially with more and more nations contributing new Hollywood stars to outshine those who came before. And that brings us to Sam Worthington, one of the latest attempt Australia has put forward to try and prove their relevance in today's film industry. Sure, everybody was impressed with his American debut in the fun but otherwise frivolous Terminator Salvation, but since then his career the past couple of years has been... uneven. Sure, he scored great successes in Avatar and Clash of the Titans, but neither of those could be considered "acting" films. His only other widely-released film, the spy thriller The Debt, was successful at the box office only by virtue of being inexpensively made. While I have no doubt that this year's Clash sequel Wrath of the Titans will also be a massive success, I'm waiting for Worthington to prove that he can overcome that "action" motif and prove he has talent consistent with what we witnessed so briefly in Terminator Salvation. That's what made Man on a Ledge so interesting for me. Here was a chance for Worthington to have a taste of both worlds, with some of the action that has made him the actor he is today, alongside some legitimate dramatic and thriller bits that would challenge him to expand on his usual repertoire. Being surrounded by a talented cast (including Jamie Bell, Anthony Mackie and Ed Harris) doesn't hurt either, and the ensemble cast looked more than able to make up for what looked like little more than lightly clever heist film. At center stage is the Aussie actor, trying to show us that he indeed has what it takes to run with the big boys.

No, really, he just enjoys the view

One morning, fugitive and former police officer Nick Cassidy (Worthington) enters a Manhattan hotel and checks in under a false name. The man accused and convicted of stealing the Monarch diamond from Real Estate tycoon David Englander (Ed Harris), Nick apparently has little to live for, and climbs out on the high ledge of the hotel. This action soon gains witnesses, as a police and a shocked crowd gather, the law to try and save his life, the crowd to see whether he'll jump. The eyes of the city are on Nick... and that allows his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and Joey's girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) to sneak into a building across the street with a whole mess of thieving tools. Their mission? To prove that the Monarch diamond was never stolen, and that Nick Cassidy was an innocent man all along.

We love wires

Okay, to be fair, the whole situation is more than a BIT convoluted. You're going to be asking yourself a lot of questions, such as "why does he have to be right across the street? Why not be across town?" and "how did Joey and Angie afford all that extremely sophisticated equipment they use to break into a high-security building?" "Why would Joey give Angie a chance to back out when he would have had no chance of success on his own?" "How did Nick get convicted with no real evidence that he stole the diamond in the first place?" All good questions, never answered. While the premise in itself is indeed an intriguing one, it's also the film's fatal flaw; very little actually makes sense, and yet things turn out okay for the most part. When something comes up and a character says "we're not ready yet", there's no real explanation as to why they're not and by the time the moment comes to past, they usually are. Man on a Ledge has plenty of last-second gasps, but thankfully they are not what drives the film.

Nick made sure to get a live feed of the Giants game. Because some things are too important to miss

In fact, it's the human element of Ledge that is the real treat for audiences, and the film has a bevy of talented actors to build a film around. Best is the pairing of Jamie Bell and Genesis Rodriguez as the amateur robbers. Romantically linked, their conversations are full of humorous bickering and even innuendo, and the two have a great chemistry that makes it all work. Bell of course is amazing (as always) in a role more free-form than most he usually performs, even allowing him in one moment to draw upon his Billy Elliot history. He's an extremely talented actor, and hopefully he'll be leading films in his own right. Rodriguez, who to this point has mostly appeared in Spanish-language telenovelas, puts on a remarkably nuanced performance as Angie, portrayed as being smarter, stronger and more dominant overall than Bell's Joey. Angie is the perfect example of the strong female character you don't see in most Hollywood screenplays these days, and Rodriguez might prove herself into a successful acting career with this debut. Another strong female character is negotiator Lydia Mercer, played by Elizabeth Banks. I'm not usually a fan of Banks, but she does a fine job playing Mercer, a rookie who famously botched rescuing the victim of a similar suicide attempt and has been vilified by the press and her peers, as if she hadn't already been having a difficult time breaking into the "boys club" of the NYPD. I hadn't expected much, but the character's transformation over the course of the film is one of its highlights, one that makes the film much better than it should be. Other good performances come from cops played by Titus Welliver and Anthony Mackie.

"Dispatch? I forgot my lines again. Advise?"

Of course, the film does have major flaws, mostly in the acting department. Worthington is actually mostly okay, his energy and enthusiasm making up for some minor flaws and the fact that his Australian accent keeps popping up for no reason. He's got the charisma to lead a major motion picture; I'm just not sure this was the right one. There were two far worse performances to be had, one inexcusable and the other unnecessary. Director Asger Leth typically makes documentaries (and incidentally hasn't made a film in six years) and so his inclusion of a major character in the press corps is not all that surprising. What IS surprising is that in putting Kyra Sedgwick in that role, he has guaranteed that I'm that much further from bothering with her TV show The Closer, as her reporter is the worst representation of the free press I've seen in film. Her role is also borderline insulting, as she's playing a Latina (Suzie Morales), leading me to wonder at the laziness of the casting. I don't care if you thought she could pull it off; either cast a Latina, or change the character's name. As if we don't have enough high profile racial casting issues in Hollywood today. But Ed Harris has the unfortunate fate of having the worst role in the film, that of the completely illogical villain. His role is so poorly written, conceived and executed that you have to ask what it was that Harris saw in the script that made such an otherwise talented performer proclaim that he was in. Every decision David Englander makes during the film is stupid, making one question how he became so successful in the first place. A horrible antagonist would be a prime reason to stay away from Man on a Ledge, were it not for all the dominant GOOD work around him.

This won't end well

The stuff I liked? Anything Bell and Rodriguez and their adventures in breaking and entering, Banks' good cop schtick, the action and even Sam Worthington in a role that won't establish him as a star, but doesn't hurt his chances either. The bad? Harris, Sedgwick, a negative look at humanity in general, and a plot that is so contrived and dependant on things going JUST the right way that it becomes completely unbelievable in the face of pure logic. I enjoyed Man on a Ledge despite its flaws, but that doesn't mean that they can be ignored. For now, it's the #5 movie of 2012, and if this is the worst thing I'll see this year (and it won't be), I'll still be happy with it overall.

The Way Back Machine

World War II movies are a tricky business. There's nobody that will deny the cultural and historical significance of the war on the entire world, so changed was most of human society by the events the war brought. That alone makes films about the war popular and almost guaranteed money-makers. The problem with that is that there's no guarantee of quality when it comes to these films. Pearl Harbor is a perfect example of a WWII film that made gobs of dough solely on the patriotic message the film portrayed, and certainly not on any quality film-making. Since WWII films are so popular and populous, they basically construct a genre all their own, one which seemingly every year add more titles to the roll call. That alone put The Way Back on my radar, and it's trailer was intriguing enough to get me into the theater this past Monday and check it out. With a talented director in Peter Weir and a strong acting cadre, the film seemed like more than those similar titles littering the WWII landscape could aspire to.

Guess which ones won't be making it home to momma?

Beginning at a cold Siberian gulag, The Way Back is based on the book The Long Walk by Swladomir Rawicz, depicting his alleged escape from sed gulag on a 4,000 mile walk to India and freedom. Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is a Polish political prisoner, arrested after the Russian invasion of Poland for conspiring against Mother Russia. When torture doesn't get him to confess, the authorities torture his wife to make her give him up, and before long Janusz is shipped off to Siberia and a labor camp that holds men from several nationalities oppressed by the Communist state. After a few months, a severe snowstorm presents the perfect opportunity for Janusz and some of his friends in the camp to make a break for it, beginning their long walk to freedom.

Quote me on this: "Ed Harris in his ugliest role yet."

While the cruelty of the Germans during World War II is practically legendary - most notably their treatment of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other minority groups - and German Prisoner of War camps enjoy popularization in film and television from The Great Escape to Hogan's Heroes, it's often glossed over just how practically evil Josef Stalin's regime was in the east. Any region conquered by the Soviet Union at that point was absorbed into its girth and the people mercilessly manhandled by a nation bent on global domination. And so a variety of nationalities ended up at these camps, many for political crimes such as preaching religion or conspiring against the state, and many Yugoslavs, Latvians, Poles, Americans and Russians are held at these camps far from civilization for simply getting on Stalin's bad side. That aspect made this film unique even among similar films by focusing on an aspect of the war most people don't think of.

Bet they're not expecting the Spanish Inquisition

The pacing of the film feels uneven at times. The scenes in the camp early on feel rushed, as the film attempts to introduce us to our prospective escapees in a timely manner so as to get the main story underway quickly. Unfortunately, that makes for the worst part of the movie, as some of the characters are not very distinguishable early on, and the result is a mishmash of scenes that don't really make sense until much later on. It's not a complete throwaway, but when you compare it to the seemingly endless distant shots of characters walking across forbidding landscapes, you wish a bit more time had been invested in the opening. Over the course of the film the characters thankfully become much more detailed, and any fear of confusing people becomes far less likely.

Bet Russia's beginning to look real good right now...

The cast also manages to be one of the strongest I've seen in any film of late. Sturgess, who I'd enjoyed in the gambling thriller 21, is amazing as Janusz, the impromptu leader of this motley crew of misfits and malcontents. He seems to be a natural when it comes to using the wilds to survive, and while no background is given as to why that would be the case, he still makes for a believable leader and a compelling and charismatic main character. Ed Harris is surly and strong as the American Smith, a man so beaten down my personal tragedy that he has become solely focused on personal survival, and while you are saddened when any of the film's characters dies, Smith is the one you keep actively wishing to go on. That's the power of Harris's performance. Colin Farrell plays Valka, a professional Russian criminal who forces his way onto the crew to avoid a gambling debt in prison. Farrell, long an under-appreciated actor by film goers, has possibly the most fun on this cast as a man who has done evil things and the experience allows him to see the darkness in others. Saoirse Ronan is also amazing as Irena, a young Polish teen the group takes in. I've never seen Ronan in anything before, though she had been nominated for a Golden Globe (for Atonement), and seeing this makes me want to go back and see her earlier work. It also makes me excited for the upcoming Hanna, which I saw a trailer for the same day. Other standouts include Dragos Bucur as an accountant with a strange sense of humor, Skarsgard family member Gustaf as a former priest, and Mark Strong as a former actor who initially plans the escape. It's to the film's credit that every character represented is interesting and unique, making those people who would be cannon fodder in lesser films into real humans, especially when you know not all of them will be making it home.

Remember when Colin Farrell was a big deal? Me either.

While the lack of success in the box office was a little suspicious in my eyes, The Way Back thankfully turned out to be almost as good as I'd hoped. There are the aforementioned pacing issues, but for the most part it works itself out over the film's two-plus hours. The settings are extraordinarily beautiful, even with the promises of probable death brought with it. That can be attributed to National Geographic's involvement in the film's production. With amazing acting and a powerful story of human strength, The Way Back would probably be #1 on my list of films for 2011, had it qualified. Unfortunately, the film was released briefly in late 2010 to qualify for award nominations, and while it did garner an Oscar nom, it was only for Best Makeup. As good a movie as it is, however, I'll still pop it in as #9 on my list of 2010's Best Movies. Definitely worth seeing, if you can work it in.