Extinction Level Entertainment

I've been catching up on a lot of 2014 movies this past week, and I'm going to get on to writing about them soon enough, but right now I just have to talk about Transformers: Age of Extinction. I have to talk about it because the fourth live-action movie in the Hasbro toy franchise might just be the best movie of director Michael Bay's career.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking: "That's not saying much," and normally, you'd be right. Bay has become known as a staple of big, explosion-laden blockbusters, dating way back to 1995 and directorial debut Bad Boys. The director has made a name for himself by making successful tentpole flicks ever since, and even though his stories and characters have been dumb as rocks (and getting dumber every time), people still want to see his movies. That's because Bay wants everything you see (in his own words) "to be awesome", and that energy tends to rub off onto the big screen and excite his audiences. But as I said, his storytelling has gotten dumber, and the first three Transformers movies are perfect examples of Bay's negative trends as a director: he doesn't know where to focus the story, his humor devolves into criminally racial stereotypes, he feels the need to pull a Lucas and create Jar Jar Binks-level caricatures for "levity", and despite everything we've been told in the past twenty years, he's really not all that great at directing action, where the characters clash in mishmashes of unreadable disaster porn.

"Take me to your Earth women."

And yet... Age of Extinction is actually pretty good. Not "great", but also not just "good for Michael Bay". In his surprising fourth turn as director of the franchise (the third was supposed to have been his last), Bay actually seems to be growing as a director. I know, I can't believe it, either! The story takes place five years after the climactic battle of Chicago from Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and in the aftermath a black ops CIA strike force has been hunting down the robotic aliens with a vengeance, with both the noble Autobots and evil Decepticons in their cross-hairs. They're even getting aid from a rogue Transformer bounty hunter named Lockdown (voiced by Mark Ryan) who seems to have an agenda of his own concerning his brethren. With the remaining "robots in disguise" in hiding, nobody knows where Autobot commander Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) is... until a damaged semi truck shows up in the barn of Texas technician Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg)...

Not even Marky Mark can stand up to these baddies...

So, to be honest, the reason I enjoyed this latest Transformers flick so much is because the whole thing is actually ABOUT something. Whereas the first three were nothing but the hidden war between the Autobots and the Decepticons and Bay's love of all things military, and yet somehow focusing mainly on the spasming face of Shia LaBeouf, Age of Extinction actually seems to have something behind the exposition and explosions. It's about being a father, as Wahlberg's character must deal with the realization that he can't always protect his daughter (The Last Airbender's Nicola Pelz) from the dangers of the world. It's about racial profiling in a post-9/11 scenario, as we see the human bad guys (played by Kelsey Grammar and Titus Welliver) expound "us vs. them" speeches without discerning between the evil and innocent under their gaze, with one even having lost family in the aforementioned Chicago battle. It's about cloning, corporate greed, the dangers of too-soon scientific progress, genocide, a veteran soldier's bitterness at being abandoned by the people he worked so hard to protect, and what it means to be a living being. There are deep, philosophical discussions to be made of any of these topics, and they all have a part to play in the plot. Now granted, Bay is not necessarily the best man to be putting these ideas out there alongside his CGI mayhem and robotic dinosaurs, but that he does so well introducing these ideas to a major Hollywood blockbuster makes you wonder if he's secretly been growing as a director while the world has scoffed as his "artistic achievements" thus far.

If struts could kill...

Another major upgrade made to this sequel is the cast. Gone are the boring, adolescent hi-jinks of Sam Witwicky and his useless, pointless, interchangeable love interests Megan Fox/Rosie Huntington-Whitely. Gone are the requisite military bad-asses and really just pointless cameos Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson. Gone are wacko John Tuturro, Witwicky parents Kevin Dunn and Julie White (who were appreciated by absolutely no-one), and almost every racist and sexist stereotype (just almost, because... Michael Bay) that has plagued the franchise to this point. They're replaced by a mostly-solid group of actors, especially Wahlberg in the lead. Finally, Transformers fans have a thoughtful, likable human protagonist who actually does things that MATTER, far beyond just being a cosmic MacGuffin who improbably gets the girl through sheer audience annoyance. Wahlberg has showed a heft of talent over the years, and working with Bay again (they paired up for last year's awful Pain & Gain) as an off-type everyman works surprisingly well, thanks to the equal parts tough guy and compassionate man that the role required, to which the actor took exceptionally well. He gets some good support as well, not only from Grammar and Welliver (the former also gleefully playing against type), but also Stanley Tucci as a results-oriented scientist dreaming of greatness, Sophia Myles (Madame de Pompadour!) as a geologist who discovers that what we know about Dinosaur extinction isn't necessarily true, Resident Evil: Retribution's Li Bingbing as Tucci's surprisingly kick-ass assistant, and even T.J. Miller providing a bit of decent comic relief in the first act. And the Transformers themselves get a bit more attention this time around, with the voices of Cullen, John Goodman, Ken Watanabe and John Dimaggio providing more personality and depth than we had seen from this group in the previous three entries. I've been saying for a while that the series needed to focus more on the titular heroes if it wanted my respect, and Bay actually seems to have addressed that issue, putting them front and center and writing some excellent material for the voice actors to work through. It's almost as if the director actually WANTED to make a Transformers movie this time around.

'Murica!

Not everything works out, however. Bay's dislike of strong women seems to show no sign of ending, as the woman who gets the most screentime is the whiny, bratty, completely useless Nicola Pelz. And her character isn't that great, either (zing!). Frankly speaking, Tessa Yeager just makes no sense, in one scene decrying the head-in-the-sky nature of her inventor father and declaring herself the real manager of the household, the next screaming for her "daddy" to save her from the giant robots battle she's too stupid to run in the opposite direction from. Even her singular "redeeming" moment is shortchanged, as she really doesn't do anything besides help her boyfriend (played blandly by Jack Reynor) do one solitary - albeit admittedly important - task, and it never really makes up for how insufferably annoying she is. Forget comparing her to Megan Fox - whose uselessness was at least mitigated by her coolness and take-charge attitude - Pelz's role and performance make Rosie Huntington-Whitely look like an Oscar-caliber actress. If there's one thing that could be said positively about Pelz, it's that she does a better job here than she did in the abomination that was The Last Airbender, but anybody who saw that knows that pieces of rotting driftwood could have done better.

No, wait, Chevy Camero! Better time! 'Murica!

Another downside - or at least a surprisingly inconsistent element - is the SFX use, which most of the time looks positively gorgeous but on occasion flickers into cartoonish territory. And it's not the Transformers animations, which you could forgive for having more uncanny valley than the average Robert Zemeckis movie. No, those look crisp as ever, and combined with the excellent voice-work, make for some amazingly compelling visuals. No, it's the smaller effects that stand out, such as when some human characters are scaling down a building side, and the CGI is just SCREAMING, it's so noticeable. Bay does use some practical effects, but when he uses computers to render something other than the title's main characters, it just doesn't look quite right. This is a shock when you consider how relatively flawless the previous entries were as far as special effects went (it was universally the best aspect of those moves) and how Bay has essentially built his career on said big screen spectacle. It's only a minor gripe, nowhere near the worst the film has to offer.

It's a robot... with a sword... riding a robotic T-Rex. I have no words.

Now, despite the praise I've been heaping on the movie brought to us from Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (whose last great screenplay was The Ring, and that was an American remake of a Japanese classic), I'm not saying that Transformers: Age of Extinction is great. Like I said, despite the surprising depth and metaphor present in the story, Bay still is still not the best director at developing the "human element". The ending is a bit rushed, the only reason they filmed the third act in Hong Kong was a blatant attempt to cash in on the Chinese box office, the product placement is fairly obvious, and the characters often refer to things they couldn't have learned but for a choppy film editing process. The movie also feels a bit long at almost three hours, though it should be pointed out that it never feels as long as, say, Zack Snyder's fellow advertising firm Man of Steel.  But despite these perfectly obvious blemishes, to Bay's credit he doesn't do a half-bad job, either. The action is actually pretty clear, and despite some pointless slow-motion bits (like Pelz' dialogue, Bay doesn't always know how to properly emphasize) the battle sequences are engaging and pretty easy to follow, the antithesis of the first three.

Speech, speech! Oh, who am I kidding, we all know he's going to make a speech.

For the director, this surprising maturity between the first three Transformers movies and now really does bring this fourth entry to a whole other level, blending some serious filmmaking with his usual bombast and bright shininess to create something that isn't entirely brainless and idiotic. I know that might sound like damning with faint praise, but I'm just SHOCKED that Bay was able to create a movie this GOOD and I'm not sure how to say good things about his work. Every action director usually has ONE really good movie, but as Bay really hasn't had one yet, I thought perhaps he had peaked back in the 90's. But - and I'm totally serious when I say this - Michael Bay has made the best movie of his career, and it's a good action film. Not just good compared to Armageddon, or to The Island, or to any of his previous Transformers movies. No, Michael Bay has actually created his magnum opus, a surprisingly cohesive popcorn film that doesn't automatically offend your sense of intelligence every time someone opens their mouth. And Age of Extinction is actually a whole lot of fun, to boot. Sure, you probably need to see the previous dreck to get a full sense of the storyline as a whole, but even if you're not a hardcore fan of the 80's toy craze, there's still a lot to appreciate about what has transformed here.

My August Rundown

Sorry about the long wait for new reviews, folks. The decision to move from my former apartment to the new one was sudden and not entirely my decision. For three weeks, I barely had time to SEE any movies, let alone review them in a timely manner. And to top it all off, when I arrived at the new place, it took a week just to get the internet up and running. I'm just not one of those types who can pull out his phone and post from there. Typing just doesn't feel natural unless I'm sitting at my desk or in bed with the laptop. But since I DO want to get back into the swing of things, I'm just going to jot down my impressions of the movies I watched in August, a month with blessed few titles I actually cared to see. I'll include a brief synopsis, my findings, and a final score, based on an A+ to F ratings system. There were certainly a number of movies I wish I hadn't missed, but most of those, like The Spectacular Now or The Butler, are still out there. Sadly, so are many that I'm glad I didn't see. I'll catch up on them eventually, but for the moment I present to you what I would like to call... my August.

2 Guns is exactly the kind of gun-toting wise-crackery you would expect from a film that stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg. In this buddy-cop formula, the two actors play a DEA agent and a Naval Intelligence Officer, respectively, who go undercover without knowledge of the other, in an attempt to take down a vicious Mexican drug cartel. After they successfully rob a bank in an effort to solve the case, they discover one-another's true identities, as well as the fact that they have unwittingly ripped off a corrupt cell of the CIA. With the money lost in the wind and three whole organizations calling for their blood, two men who simply do not trust one another are forced to work together just to survive.

As I mentioned before, 2 Guns is definitely derivative of the buddy-cop formula that has existed in Hollywood for decades. Adding an international flavor with the Mexican drug angle helps, as does the easy chemistry between the film's stars, and the trio of heavyweights coming after them (played well by Edward James Olmos, Bill Paxton and James Marsden). Director Baltasar Kormakur (Contraband) knows how to film action, even if his directing as a whole is uneven and at times excessively violent. Still, the humorous edge does work wonders, causing the film to rise well above where it ought to have been. However, his is no game-changer for either Washington or Wahlberg. Despite their pairing, 2 Guns was never meant to be anything more than a flash in the pan. The story at times does get pretty bright, but other than some crisp dialogue the whole thing is barely memorable.

Score: B-

I'd been long awaiting Elysium, the sophomore entry from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, and not just because District 9 was one of the best science fiction films of the past decade, if not all time. You had Matt Damon, who looked to kick the most ass since leaving the Jason Bourne franchise, and Jodie Foster, a talented actress who is just starting to get back into mainstream films after almost a decade of independents and laying low. The story takes place on a ravaged and over-populated Earth and follows Max (Damon), a former car thief trying to keep his life on the straight and narrow when a work incident exposes him to a lethal dose of radiation that will end his life in a manner of days. His only chance is to escape to Elysium, a wondrous man-made satellite that is the home of the rich and powerful, orbiting the Earth while leaving the sick and dying planet to the poor. There, and only there, they have the state-of-the-art medical facilities that can heal him. Hacked into an experimental exoskeleton designed to keep him alive, Max seeks to take over Elysium and change the class system forever.

In retrospect, it's easy to see how Elysium fails to live up to the bar set by its predecessor. District 9 had an amazing and believable universe set around its alien refugee invasion plot, and the story was subtle and nuanced leading up to its explosive-packed ending. Elysium lacks that same subtlety, and while the action never gets dull, Blomkamp's curious use of shaky cam makes the fights confusing, really taking you out of the story. The acting is also all over the place; while Damon is solid and Sharlto Copley's appearance as an evil mercenary is downright scary, Foster turns in a throwaway performance that is almost cartoonishly bad. You'll certainly enjoy yourself watching this, especially with the gorgeous visuals projected onto the big screen, but with such an obvious 99% message hammered down your throat, it's hard to get fully behind this otherwise-innovative tale.

Score: B

The concept behind We're the Millers was simply too good NOT to be true. When a low-level drug dealer (Jason Sudeikis) is forced to smuggle marijuana across the border from Mexico in order to pay off his blood-thirsty boss, he is unsure as of how to pull it off without getting caught. Desperate, he hires a broke stripper (Jennifer Aniston) and two local youngsters (Emma Roberts and Will Poulter) to play his "family", and the group travel down south to pick up the package. But two things happen: first, things get complicated as the gang discovers they haven't completed a transaction so much as they've stolen from a ruthless drug lord. The second is that, despite their initial dislike of one another, the four begin to grow into something resembling a family unit. But despite their growth, will these four people who are not as they outwardly appear be the victims of violence when that drug lord eventually catches up?

To the point, We're the Millers is way, WAY funnier than it ought to be. This is partially due to the work of Dodgeball director Rawson Marshall Thurber in keeping the pace and jokes flying, but especially thanks to the cast. While Sudeikis perhaps is the weakest link here, everyone else has chances to shine, especially British actor Poulter as a virginal teenager. Aniston also proves that she can still pull off angry well, and though her range is rather limited she does a great job of picking roles that let her tap into that vein. But perhaps the biggest scene-stealers are Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn as the parental units of another traveling family to whom the "Millers" become acquainted. While some of the jokes miss, far more hit that sweet spot perfectly, and when that 110 minutes has passed you'll wish you could stay for more of that great humor. We're the Millers is easily one of the funniest R-rated comedies in recent memory, and while that's really not saying much, it's a platitude well deserved.

Score: A-

I saw Blue Jasmine more out of respect for its director than for thinking it would be a great movie. Woody Allen is a legendary filmmaker whose efforts have largely been lauded in the industry even as they have often failed to garner a mainstream audience. His biggest hit in recent memory was easily Midnight in Paris, and it also happens to be my favorite of his films. After the mediocrity that was To Rome with Love, however, I remain convinced that Midnight will remain his high point for the distant future. Still, with a strong cast and strong Oscar buzz for Cate Blanchett, I figured I could spare a couple of hours and give this one a try. It follows Jasmine Francis (Blanchett), a former big-time society wife whose multimillionaire husband was a crooked financier, getting himself arrested and soon afterward dead in prison. Penniless and humiliated, Jasmine moves across country to San Francisco, moving in with her sister and hoping to turn her life around. But no matter what she does, whether it's getting a receptionist job, returning to school or meeting a romantic interest, she cannot escape the truth about where she came from and the mental instability that threatens to crack her soul at any second.

As I mentioned before, the cast is absolutely spectacular. Blanchett is especially divine, the marriage of Jasmine's demure personality to Allen's dialogue as expert a performance as you're likely to see this year. And there's more as well, as the group of actors includes standout performances by Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Sally Hawkins. But while the cast is first-rate, the pacing is a bit slow, and the characters a bit too numerous. Jasmine makes for an excellent character study, but the others - while certainly well-acted - are written as relative one-notes and given a bit too much to do. Blue Jasmine is a bit closer to Vicky Cristina Barcelona than it is to Midnight in Paris, and so it's better off as a future DVD rental than as a trip to the movies right now.

Score: B

With four wide releases coming out the weekend of August 18'th, Paranoia was the choice of my faithful movie-going sidekick Anne. I guarantee it wasn't the story of a war between two old tech giants that enticed her, but the starring role going to Liam Hemsworth, younger brother of Thor and up-and-coming Hollywood hunk. Oh, well, at least I get Amber Heard as part of the package.

Paranoia is the story of Adam Cassidy (Hemsworth), a blue-collar computer expert who finds himself trapped in a trade war between cell phone magnates Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman) and Jock Goddard (Harrison Ford). Forced to spy on Goddard on behalf of Wyatt, Adam hopes to at least come out making enough money to take care of his dad. But when things go from shady to outright deadly, it'll take everything Adam and his precious few allies have to overcome and take down these seemingly untouchable forces.

As a brainless diversion, Paranoia has opportunities to be passable entertainment, and for the most part it takes them. There's equal parts humor, tension and action, and the story itself is decent, if laughably edited and entirely predictable. Director Robert Luketic (Killers, 21) isn't the best director out there, which should have been the first clue as to Paranoia's true potential. The acting and dialogue are also second-rate, and while Oldman and Heard really try their hardest to make the material work, Hemsworth is entirely vanilla. Worse, Ford puts in the kind of ham-fisted, paycheck-seeking performance that reminds you that without Han Solo and Indiana Jones, his career would be far less memorable. Despite a few smart choices, it's mostly wasted potential, and there's really not that much about Paranoia that makes me excited to see its eventual DVD release.

Score: C-

I've been awaiting Kick-Ass 2 for nearly three years. That was when the original Kick-Ass hit theaters with it's bizarre blend of ultra-violence and dry, bathroom humor. And for the most part, it worked. It heralded the rise of actors Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz and brought something radically different to the big screen. Expecting anything different from the sequel would be a mistake, especially considering the smaller budget and change of directors (from X-Men First Class' Matthew Vaughn to Jeff Wadlow, whose biggest movie to date is American martial arts flick Never Back Down). Kick-Ass 2 continues the story of every-man turned brawling hero Dave Lizewski as he adjusts to a world in which it's becoming cool to dress up in cool costumes and fight crime when the sun goes down. Kick-Ass soon finds himself surrounded by like-minded citizens determined to keep the streets safe. But when Chris D'Amico demands revenge on the hero for the death of his father, he puts together a gang of super-villains with one goal in mind; humiliate and kill Kick-Ass.

Frankly, if you liked the first movie back in 2010, there's absolutely no reason not to like this sequel. Despite the change of creative heads, Kick-Ass 2 is strikingly similar to its predecessor that you'd be certain they were made by the same filmmakers. There is the new emphasis over super-groups over the individual, and Wadlow does a good job expanding the universe that had already been set in the last go-around. And if I had the room there would be no end of praise for Moretz, whose character undergoes such an epic, identity-seeking journey that sets in nicely - if apart - from the rest of the story. There are some quibbles: Jim Carey is a bit misused (though genuinely unrecognizable) and doesn't quite fill the void left by the first movie's Nicolas Cage, and the special effects are a bit of a step back, though to be fair they looked worse in previews than they did in the final big screen product. Kick-Ass 2 is not a total package, but does a better job of reminding viewers why the first one was so good, feeling remarkably similar to the first Kick-Ass while still establishing it as a film all its own.

Score: B

The wait is finally over. The World's End is the final entry in director Edgar Wright's so-called "Cornetto Trilogy", following cult hits Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the films that made Simon Pegg and Nick Frost household names. The World's End takes five grown men who were friends since childhood (Pegg, Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Eddie Marsan), as they travel back to their hometown of Newton Haven at the urging of Pegg's alcoholic miscreant, in order to complete the "Golden Mile", a pub crawl spanning twelve bars across the village. What they discover along the way is that most of the townspeople have changed since they left; not in the normal ways, but replaced by human-like, blue-blooded robots from outer space. With no hope of escape and no discernible plan, the five friends can do only one thing: reach the final pub on the way, the "World's End", and hope for the best.

In the end, this might be considered the best of Wright's loosely-associated trilogy. The film pumps all of the character development and plot progression into the opening sequence, which would seem odd anywhere else but here allows the film to pace itself perfectly, as the lads go from location to location without having to stop and explain themselves. We largely understand their motivations from moment one, and it allows them to do what they do without causing confusion for the audience. It's great to see Frost play straight man off the wonderfully-irreverent Pegg (it's usually the other way around), and the humor hits on all cylinders, while still finding some room for some appropriate melodramatics when they're called for. The supporting cast also helps immeasurably, which is far different from the two-man shows that were Shaun and Hot Fuzz. The ending is a bit drawn-out, but The World's End is still a relative masterstroke by its creators, as Wright, Pegg and Frost put together an "End of the World" movie that handily beats the similar efforts that have been released the past few years.

Score: A

I realize now that logically I should have concluded with The World's End, but I of course blindly went in order of viewing. So we finish up with You're Next, a low-budget horror flick from Adam Wingard, perhaps best known for his additions to the V/H/S series of horror compilations. It's a familiar horror trope; an often-contentious family gets together for the first time in a while to celebrate their parents' wedding anniversary at their remote family summer home. Suddenly, and without warning, they are attacked and hunted by a group of mask-wearing killers intent on slaughtering the entire family. But this is no random attack; there's a reason these things are happening, and if anybody wants to survive, they'll have to find out who these attackers are, and why they're doing this.

You're Next starts off with cervical bruising (there, I said it), and for a while you're not sure if it will ever get any better. The trope has been done to death (home invasion horror is nothing new) and even horrible fare such as The Purge manages to include something new to the formula once in a while. Top that off with the acting, which ranges from stilted to just plain bad (the one exception is Australian lead Sharni Vinson, who is wonderful). Then, just as the film begins to veer into the point of no return, You're Next begins to emerge as something of a black comedy, riffing on the very genre it's emulating. Yes, the twists become obvious and the gore is pointless, but some of the deaths are actually pretty inventive and you actually get some glee out of watching little-loved or poorly-developed characters get offed in humorous ways. It's not as good as it could have been, but horror fans may enjoy it, even if absolutely nobody else will.

Score: B-

That, folks, was my August. As you can tell, eight movies is a little under my usual monthly average, and I'll be sure to catch up on Percy Jackson, The Mortal Instruments, The Butler, Getaway, Closed Circuit, Planes and more in the coming months, though whether I'll see them in the theater or on DVD remains to be seen. Thanks for your patience, and I'm looking forward to getting back to a regular posting schedule from now on!

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.