Pain & Gain (2013)

Let me get my pump on before I start writing this review...

...okay, I'm back.

Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) believes in fitness.  A bodybuilder and personal trainer in Florida, Daniel's grown tired of struggling and wants some of the good life.  After attending a seminar (from a very tongue-in-cheek Ken Jeong) that encourages him to be a 'doer', a plan is hatched to rob wealthy business man Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub).  Daniel enlists two fellow bodybuilders Adrian (Anthony Mackie) and Paul (Dwayne Johnson) to help with 'the plan'.

Normally for a plan to work it has to be well thought out, and then executed by smart enough people that can improvise if things don't go as expected.  Neither is true here.  This is a crazy, stupid scheme carried out by meatheads even dumber than the plan.  The crazier part is that it actually works...for a while.  It also doesn't hurt their success that their mark was so unlikeable, and his story so unbelievable that not even the police are willing to help him.  Kershaw has to enlist a retired private detective (Ed Harris) to investigate, and even he doesn't take the job at first.

Pain & Gain is an example of one of those 'based on a true story' movies that falls under that 'it's so crazy it must be true' category.  However, this does take place in Florida, where it seems like every month we hear about some bizarre crime story taking place.  Throughout the film I oscillated between shaking my head at how unbelievable this all was, and then laughing out loud at it, whether it was intentional humor or not.

Usually when you see Michael Bay's name of film, you expect to see a lot boorish behavior, bad stereotypes and general shallowness.  That's certainly true here, but those were many of the things that actually worked.  Pain & Gain is probably Michael Bay's most self-aware work, and the story and setting were tailor made for his style.  They spend most of their time at the gym or by the pool, so you can expect to see a lot of skin and very attractive people, but it's not forced for a change.

It far from a great film though, and there are some flaws.  The main one being that it's a little too long.  I couldn't help checking my watch a little towards the end.  It wasn't out of any kind of boredom, but more that there are points where you think the film is wrapping up, but then continues on.  It could have been tightened up, especially where it focused too long on some of the supporting characters.

I was also a little annoyed by the camera work.  There's lots of typical Michael Bay slow motion and other jumpy camera stuff, but as the movie went on, it bothered me less.  I think all the frenetic movement helped sell the craziness of the story, and it wouldn't have been as entertaining if it was static.

There's also a ton of narration, and from every character.  This was very distracting at first, to the point where I was ready to start yelling at the characters to shut up, but this was also something that the movie grows into.  Much of this was done early on to provide depth and back story to the characters, but it was just a little clumsy in its execution.

Pain & Gain doesn't have quite as much action as you might think based on the cast.  This is made up for by the amount of humor in the film.  Again, some of this is unintentional humor where you just can't help but laugh at how stupid these guys are, but there's actually a lot of very funny dialog.  I'm sure the screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely in some ways kind of wrote itself.  How could you not get humor out these people and situations?  The dialog did have some additional punch to it though, and I found myself laughing way more than I expected.

I thought the trio of Wahlberg, Johnson, and Mackie were all great.  You never really have a reason to like any of these guys, and they'll all pretty despicable for the most part, yet their performances keep you interested.  I've often been hard on Mark Wahlberg for being too serious, but this recent focus on more humorous roles is really working, and thought he was great.  The real stand out, once again, was Dwayne Johnson.  His character is a ex-con, turned Jesus freak, but then reverts back to his cokehead ways as the film goes on.  It's a hilarious transition and most of the funniest moments and best lines are his.

What can I say?  Sometimes stupid works.  Pain & Gain is everything you'd expect out of a Michael Bay film, but this time he's in on the joke.  It's an unbelievable, but somehow true story, with great performances and just the right amount of humor to make it fun to watch.  This is a great one to catch with friends, and maybe have a few cold ones beforehand.  I give it a strong matinee recommendation.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Gangster Squad (2013) - Movie Review

Gangsters shoot about as well as Stormtroopers.

Here's an example of when a movie 'based off true events' misses the mark.  In Gangster Squad we follow a task force created to stop gangster Mickey Cohen's criminal organization.

Set back in the late 1940's, Cohen (Sean Penn) was a ruthless gangster that the LAPD was in danger of losing the city to.  It didn't help that many local police forces were on his payroll, and just as much a part of the problem as the gangsters were. Chief Bill Parker (a super gravelly Nick Nolte), puts John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) in charge of putting together a small, 'off the books' task force to stop Cohen.  O'Mara is an honest, but tough minded cop, and is told that he doesn't simply want Cohen killed, but he wants his organization destroyed to the point where any other gangster would be scared off from trying to swoop in after Cohen is gone.

Normally a movie like Gangster Squad is right up my alley.  It's slick looking, has a good cast, and I generally love stories about gangsters, especially when based off real people.  However, the whole time while I'm watching I can't quite figure out why it wasn't clicking for me.  After a bloody opening, I thought it was going to be the kind of violent crime drama that I enjoy, but it all felt very tame somehow.  Maybe because when I compare it to something like Django Unchained the violence didn't have the same kind of impact to it.

The story itself is also very thin and there's not a lot of depth to any of the characters.  They try to show that some of the squad members are conflicted over the level of violence they are using to stop the bad guys, and is there really any difference between the police and the gangsters, but they don't really go into it too much.  Will Beall's script was based off a book Tales from the Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman, and neither he or the book have an entry on Wikipedia, so that ought to tell you something about how popular or critically acclaimed that book is.  If you're gonna base your 'based on true events' movie off a book, maybe you should go with one people have heard of.  I'm a little nervous now that Beall is attached to both the upcoming Justice League movie and the next Lethal Weapon.  I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

There's also a love story between squad member Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) and Cohen's girlfriend Grace (Emma Stone). As much as I like Gosling and Stone, I felt they were both miscast here.  Stone seemed too young and innocent to play the kind of sexy the role needed, not that there was much to the role in the first place.  Gosling's voice had a weird affectation to it where it he sounded like he was sucking on helium in between takes, and his voice wasn't consistent through the film.  I think the biggest missed opportunity between these two was that the great chemistry they demonstrated in Crazy, Stupid, Love was all but gone here.

A movie is only as good as its bad guy, but Sean Penn's Cohen wasn't very effective.  It didn't help that they put him in ridiculous looking makeup and spoke with a overdone accent that made him feel more like a Dick Tracy villain than a real person.  It also doesn't help the realism that even with the makeup, Penn doesn't look anything like Mickey Cohen.

Mickey Cohen, 1949.  The resemblance
 to Sean Penn is uncanny, huh?

Looking at that picture, you'd think that someone like Joe Pesci or even Bob Hoskins would be a better fit.

Gangster Squad is another movie where the bad guys with automatic weapons can't hit shit, but the good guys are all crack shots.  It's like they all went to the Stormtrooper school of marksmanship.  This allows a group of just five people to take on and defeat a much larger force of gangsters.  It's not like they employed any kind of tactics to give them the upper hand either.  The bad guys even make it easy on them by refusing to take any kind of cover when being shot at or just run right up to them as they're being fired upon.

Between the over-the-top performance of Sean Penn and the silliness of his henchmen, I couldn't figure out if this was meant to be a serious drama, or if they were going for more of a humorous angle.  Confusing this further was that this was directed by Ruben Fleischer, who was on more of a comedic track with his previous films, Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less.  He's still one of my favorite up-and-coming directors, but he probably wasn't the best choice to direct if the intent was to make as serious crime drama.  I do think he did a good job with the look of the film, which was it's strength.

Gangster Squad is an example of a movie that's all style and no substance.  It's normally the type of film I eat up, but I didn't find it all that creative or original.  It wastes a talented cast with a very pedestrian story that can nobody can rise above.  It's ultimately pretty forgettable, but it's not a bad rental when you want to kill two hours.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) - Movie Review

Did you know Abraham Lincoln had a secret motivation for ending slavery?  Well, neither did I!  Turns out Lincoln didn't like vampires too much and most of the slave owners in the South were vampires.  This is the alternate history Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter wants to you to buy into.

Based off the novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote the screenplay, AL:VH begins with a young Abe Lincoln defending a friend of his who was being whipped by a slave owner named Jack Barts (Marton Csokas).  Barts does not take kindly to Abe's intervention, and later that evening kills his mother, but Abe notices there's something odd about Barts.  Years later, a drunk Lincoln (Benjamin Walker), still seeking revenge, tracks down Barts.  After a failed attempt to kill Barts, it's revealed that he's a vampire.  Lincoln is saved by Henry Sturgess (Dominic Cooper), who confirms that vampires are real, have been using slaves as a source of food and offers to train him as a vampire hunter.

You get a short Mr. Miyagi-like training montage, but they really don't spend a lot of time on that and just move on to the vampire hunting.  It jumps forward a few years and Lincoln gets a job in a shop ran by someone named Speed (Jimmi Simpson), meets Mary Todd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and reunites with his old friend, Will (Anthony Mackie).  Lincoln finds there is boss vampire (Rufus Sewell) that must also be stopped.  The movie continues to jump ahead in time following his life until after the Civil War.

If you can't get around the premise, you won't be able to get through the film.  While they do try to integrate real, historical events into the movie, you can't expect accuracy when watching a film that has Vampire Hunter in the title.  One of the things that actually made this watchable is that fact that they take it so seriously.  Maybe a little too seriously though.  With such a silly premise and title, I wish they would have had a little more fun with it and it ended up feeling very flat.

I can see some people maybe even getting a little bit upset about Lincoln's motivation.  While they show you that he was against slavery from the get go, the movie sets up his primary motivation for killing vampires as wanting revenge against the one that killed his mother.  Ending slavery in the movie seemed like more of a way to just mess with vampires rather than it simply being the right thing to do.  I'm hearing the book was written a little differently as far as his motivation, so it seems weird it was changed for the movie, especially when written by the same person.

The actors really helped sell the film with how straight they played it.  I thought 'young Liam Neeson', Benjamin Walker was actually really good as Abraham Lincoln.  He really looked the part.  I always enjoy Mary Elizabeth Winstead and I think she did a good job with what she was given.  Dominic Cooper was interesting as well, and is one of my favorite actors out there right now.  I also enjoyed Marton Csokas and Rufus Sewel as effective, vampire villains.

The dialog, however, was pretty weak.  Some of the things the characters say are just eye-rollingly bad at times.  Also, there were a lot of inconsistencies with how they treated the vampires.  Sometimes people are bitten and die immediately, sometimes they get sick and die later, other times, they are bitten and then turn into vampires themselves in a matter of minutes.  Maybe this is better explained in the novel, but not really in the movie.  There's a lot of inconsistency throughout AB:VH, but should we really be expecting that much?

The visuals were at least interesting for the most part.  Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) got a lot out of his budget.  There's a lot of similarity in his style to that of Zack Snyder's in that there's lots of CG and use of slow motion.  Sometimes the slow-mo was used effectively, but it started to wear on me at the movie went on, as it was used way too much.  I also didn't like how they used darkness and fog to obscure everything.  It felt like it was done to save money by not having to have too much detail on screen.  There's a great horse chase sequence about halfway through, but even that looked bizarre to me at times.  I didn't see this in 3D, but I feel like this might have been one of those rare times when watching this in 3D might have actually helped with the visuals.

Another issue I had with the visuals were the color schemes they used.  There were scenes where everything had a white wash to it to where it was almost colorless.  Maybe this was done in an effort to make the movie look older.  There's was one sequence where just as the action was about to pick up, the color palatte goes blue/dark and then as soon as it ends, reverts back to more of a yellow hue.  It just felt like there were too many visual tricks or gimmicks used throughout.

I will say that this was some of the best aging makeup I've seen in a movie.  They effectively made Lincoln look older as the movie went on.  Maybe the makeup department for Prometheus or J. Edgar should take some notes from these guys.  The remaining characters are vampires, so you don't have to worry about aging them.  However, with some of the other characters, like Mary Todd or Will, they just grayed their hair a little bit and added some lines, which didn't look as authentic.

Make no mistake, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is not a good movie.  For every cool thing they did, they seemed to do something that I found inconsistent or bad.  At the same time, it's much better than it had any right to be.  Again, if you can get around the premise, you should be able to have some fun with it.  Benjamin Walker gives a good performance as Lincoln and there are some interesting action scenes and visuals.  I recommend it as a rental.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars