It's amazing how one out of context image can completely change your mind on something, but that's the case here (click the image to enlarge). I have been uncertain that Michael Bay could make a movie that interested me after the cinematic abortions that were Transformers 2 and 3, but that could all change with Pain and Gain.
The story follows Johnson and Mark Walhberg, as a pair of bodybuilders who find themselves mixed up in an extortion ring and kidnapping scheme that goes wrong. And, evidently, bloody. The film also stars Anthony Mackie, Ken Jeong, Ed Harris, Rob Corddry and Tony Shaloub.
Working on a relatively small budget (IMDb estimates it at $25m), Bay, a self-confessed Coen brothers fan (look how often he casts Coen regulars in his films), has positioned this to be his Fargo and that alone gives me an absurd level of morbid curiosity.
It's interesting when restraint in a film-maker is considered audacious and experimental but that's the case with Michael Bay. I will take potentially doomed ambition over the overblown, over-budgeted garbage he has been putting out recently.
It also warrants consideration that Bay's more grotesque, politically incorrect sense of humour might be better served in the setting of a dark, adult comedy than in a franchise designed to sell toys to children.
Crazy, I know.
Source: Screencrush
