Incredibly based on a true story, Pain & Gain sees Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie as pumped-up, wannabe criminal masterminds. Here is the review.

Michael Bay has come under a lot of fire in recent years – mostly down to his Transformers films and the terrible Pearl Harbor. Luckily, Pain & Gain sees him back on form. The kind of form that saw him make great action films like The Rock, Bad Boys and, to some degree, Armageddon.

Daniel Lugo (Wahlberg) is a personal fitness instructor who spends the majority of his time trying to create the ultimate physique for himself. Yet, although he has the muscles, he feels that he is missing something in his life – the success moneywise. After meeting the recently-released Paul Doyle (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), both he and his friend Adrian (Mackie) come up with a plan to kidnap one of his clients at the gym – Victor Kershaw, played perfectly by Tony Shalhoub. Kershaw is a very successful businessman who likes to brag about his wealth.

Lugo, Doyle and Adrian then put a series of plans in motion to take Kershaw’s money, with the majority of them failing hilariously. The one rule they had was to not hurt anyone, yet it gets thrown out of the window pretty quickly, and results in armed robberies and even murder. 

Pain & Gain is a story of trying to capture the American dream, in all the wrong ways. The three main stars are all excellent, especially Dwayne Johnson as a coke addicted, Jesus loving strongman, who just wants everyone to get along.

The film will make you laugh, it may make you flinch, but most of all, you will most likely enjoy the two hour ride, and think nothing of seeing buff men in ridiculous spandex trying to dispose of a body in vain.