Movie Review: Pain and Gain

Earlier this week my wife and I went to an advanced screening of the new Michael Bay film, Pain and Gain, starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, and based on the Sun Gym kidnappings in Miami in the early 90s.

To be perfectly honest, the reason we went to the movie is that my wife is a pretty big fan of Mark Wahlberg.  Although I liked both of Michael Bay's earlier films (Bad Boys and Bady Boys II), I haven't really been a fan of the transformers movies, and I felt Armageddon wasn't quite as good as Deep Impact.

That said, I actually found Pain and Gain to be a really funny, refreshing movie about a horrific and stupid series of kidnappings that has to be read to be believed (the first of the newspaper stories the film was based on can be read here)

The story plays with multiple points of views, has a villain you can't quite feel sympathetic for, and was an all around fun movie to watch.  It does have some excessive violence and language, but assuming you're not bringing your kids to see it, it is definitely worth the watch.