Pain & Gain (Michael Bay, 2013)

“I watched a lot of movies Paul, I know what I’m doing!”

Daniel Lugo (Pain & Gain, 2013)

Michael Bay, director of commercially successful films like Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001) and the Transformers (2007; 2009; 2011; 2014) franchise, made a simple character study based on true events but actually blatantly deviated from them. Three bodybuilders dream about the ‘American Dream’, so they choose the path of fast success, the one of crime. Unfortunately, a, meant to be fast and easy, plan of extortion gets out of hand and they murder some people. Bay’s extravagant fashion of portraying action, serves as a hyperrealist representation of so-called true facts, which he claims three times during the movie. Quick cuts, canted low-angle shots and a bold but trashy nineties soundtrack like Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise and C.C. Music Factory’s Gonna Make You Sweat, contribute to the absurd and ironic world his characters move in about.

Filmmaker Bay does not seem to care to exaggerate the story and goes further than the usual subjective distortion of historical facts by pushing the narrative into a straight satire. Large American flags, silicone breasted women, sports cars and muscular sculpted men, with Daniel Lugo as frontman (“My name is Daniel Lugo, and I believe in fitness”), embody the American pride. All those satiric images of patriotism and materialism signify nothing else than the general disappointment and dissatisfaction of the so sought-after ‘American Dream’ in American history. Consumerism is based on simulacra and creates a hyperreality where through artificial simulation and imitation, happiness is supposed to be found. The film portrays how the material personality has become a fake reality, based on purchasing several transient simulacra that serve as status symbols.