Sax von Stroheim writes:

I believe in fitness.

Pain & Gain, the new true crime caper movie from Michael Bay: Uncouth Reflections Movie of the Year? Movie of the Decade? Movie of All Time? Its subject is excess, and it’s catching, so forgive the hyperbole, though this is easily one of the best Hollywood movies I’ve seen in a while. More importantly for present purposes, it deals with a number of topics that are probably of interest to UR readers: crime, steroids, the plight of low IQ losers, immigration, sexual economics, bogus self-help gurus, the mania for physical fitness, rageaholics, the porn industry, various forms of addiction, and Florida-as-national-freakshow. The movie sees all of these items through its vision of America as a culture choking on its own excess. Pain & Gain reminds me of the kind of movies William Wellman made for Warner Brothers in the early 1930s: it doesn’t feel like it was put together by people following a how-to-write-a-screenplay guide, but, rather, it’s full of digressions and sidetracks that seem to have come directly from observation of and insight into how we live now, which are conveyed through a playful, expressively cinematic style. It ends up being about a lot more than what it’s about from a strictly “What is the major theme?”-English Lit 101 perspective.

The argument that Michael Bay represents some kind of nadir of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking has always struck me as betraying the sensibility of a hysterical, middlebrow manboob. Yes, his movies are loud, overblown, and juiced on consumerism, but they’re hardly alone in that, and at least Bay has some visual style and a quirky sense of humor that leads him to cast people like John Turturro and Steve Buscemi. Those two qualities combine in one of my favorite Michael Bay moments: when we’re introduced to John Malkovich’s character in Transformers: Dark of the Moon with a shot of Malkovich’s giant, 3D floating head. Trust me, sister: there are films and filmmakers out there far, far worse than Michael Bay.

On the other hand, I’m suspicious of the highbrow defenses of his work, which, even when they use ten dollar words, still strike me as coming down to “Michael Bay is great because teh awesome – hardee, har, har…”

To me, a somewhat more realistic take on Bay’s work is that he’s a talented guy, with a limited, narrow sensibility, who has made some pretty good action blockbusters (The Island, The Rock, and Armageddon), at least one outright terrible movie (Pearl Harbor), and a couple of others that are somewhere in between. All of which is preface to say, No, I’m not surprised that Pain & Gain is such a great film: Bay IS talented, and the material is right up his alley. I liked this movie a lot: see it on as big a screen as possible.

Related

• Here’s Richard Brody’s very highbrow take on the movie. I agree with most of what Mr. Brody is saying, though I’d probably put it differently. I do agree that part of Michael Bay’s greatness is that as an image-maker he “takes a sudden and even self-surprising pleasure in seeing what he’s filming.”
• Here’s the tumblr for the Vulgar Auteurist movement: they’re big fans of Bay’s work, although I tend to think they’re being a little condescending. Or maybe just ironically condescending: it can be hard to tell these days. And here’s the original Vulgar Auteurism Guide, from egghead movie site MUBI.
• Back in the day, Michael Blowhard had nice things to say about Bay’s The Island, which was my favorite Bay flick until this new one came along. (Pain & Gain is the “smaller picture” that Bay has been threatening to make for years.)