Pain & Gain
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: April 26, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
45
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
20
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
New York PostKyle SmithApr 25, 2013
A dizzying lowlife saga that’s fast, smart, wicked, sort of ambitious and blazingly ironic. It’s as unpredictable as a Lindsay Lohan drive to the grocery store, as overstuffed as the pictures on Anthony Weiner’s Twitter feed and as hilarious as me on the bench press. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 25, 2013
In telling a true story about hapless thugs who are the embodiment of Michael Bay fans, the director has made the most fiendishly enjoyable movie of his career. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 25, 2013
It's funny as hell at times with a twisted sense of humor that one typically expects from the likes of the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezApr 25, 2013
This is easily Bay’s best movie, the work of a filmmaker with a cracked sense of humor that he is able to share with the audience. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 24, 2013
Even though Pain & Gain does indeed mine laughs from some very violent acts, there is nothing in this movie that glamorizes those three meatheads. Kudos to Bay and his screenwriters for making sure we’re laughing at them, not with them. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyApr 24, 2013
With Pain & Gain, his surprising true-crime comedy, Bay has finally decided to lighten up a bit. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinApr 28, 2013
Pain & Gain gives you a rush while at the same time making you queasy about how you’re getting off. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 26, 2013
Michael Bay sends a clear message to those of us who've been making fun of him: He's been in on the joke the whole time. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissApr 26, 2013
It's like a giant sculpture that is so strange and off-putting, it's instantly, intriguingly post-modern. Swept up in the film's pile-driving self-assurance, even Bay-haters may absorb the pain to enjoy the gain. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSimon AbramsJun 11, 2013
As ambitious and vibrant as it is ugly and scattershot, Pain & Gain is the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineNick SchagerApr 24, 2013
An outrageous based-on-real-life tale that's perfectly suited to director Michael Bay's insanely overblown stylistic and thematic temperament. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreApr 24, 2013
It’s just too much — too much graphic violence, too many plot wrinkles, too much stupidity, too many supporting players to track...For a movie as physically fit as this one wants to be, Pain & Gain is carrying way too much extra weight. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 2, 2013
The movie needed some more detachment – and brevity – but Wahlberg shows once again he has the comedy chops. Read full review
60
Time Out LondonTom HuddlestonAug 27, 2013
The ever-present air of madcap, goofball insanity carries it through. A seriously guilty pleasure. Read full review
60
EmpireMark DinningAug 26, 2013
Michael Bay goes back to a Bad Boys budget and a big boys’ rating, for a true-life crime story that’s inconsistent and frenetic, but also funny and wilfully outrageous. Read full review
60
Total FilmJames MottramAug 24, 2013
Like all of Bay’s work, it’s over-the-top, brash and exhausting to watch. But like the lifestyle its characters aspire to, there’s an allure too. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierApr 25, 2013
Wahlberg and Johnson are the saving graces of an in-your-face movie. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 25, 2013
It all leaves you pondering whether you have just seen a monumentally stupid movie or a brilliant movie about the nature and consequences of stupidity. Read full review
50
SlateDana StevensApr 26, 2013
A day and half after walking out with a sensation, primarily, of physical relief—at two hours and nine minutes, Pain & Gain makes for a long, loud, relentlessly assaultive sit—I find that my thumb is wavering at half-mast. I’m still not sure whether to mildly like or mildly hate this movie. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 26, 2013
Nobody in it seems to possess a nervous system. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyApr 25, 2013
The script’s occasional gestures toward making this an allegory of the failed American dream are extremely unconvincing in the context of a movie that revels in the excesses of macho culture while laughing at the hapless and stupid who can’t get it right. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyApr 25, 2013
That sense of extreme, excess, over-the-top everything is there from start to finish. And isn't that what Bay fans count on even at cut-rate prices? Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigApr 25, 2013
A badly constructed, blood-spattered caper that comes unglued early on. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubApr 25, 2013
It's a homemade protein-and-steroids smoothie of a plot, combining elements of gore, self-parody, 1990s nostalgia overload and an attempt to say something -- while actually saying absolutely nothing -- about the American dream.
50
Philadelphia InquirerDavid HiltbrandApr 25, 2013
Yep, it's all fun and games until someone gets brutalized repeatedly. Before you can avert your eyes, it's Katie, bar the door and break out the chain saws. Read full review
50
NPRScott TobiasApr 25, 2013
Bay blankets the film in a tone of smug self-awareness that obscures everything but its bald hypocrisy. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBarbara VanDenburghApr 25, 2013
There’s a certain kinetic charm to the first half of the movie, a freewheeling silliness to these outsized characters that makes you curious to see just how wrong things will go. But as the weightlifters’ plot spirals out of control, so does the movie’s. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackApr 25, 2013
Yes, the canon invoked for this film is that of the Three Stooges, but it’s still not as magnificently berserk as they can be. Set your expectations carefully for this one. Read full review
50
VarietyScott FoundasApr 23, 2013
Bay can be a master of exuberant chaos, but here the violence mostly lands with a sickening thud, which is fitting, one supposes, but also ultimately numbing. Read full review
42
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 24, 2013
The movie's best performance — and worst defamation — belongs to Tony Shalhoub, playing the first victim as a conniving, egotistical jerk who deserves to be kidnapped, maimed and ruined financially. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 26, 2013
This is a tragedy, not a comedy. Read full review
40
Village VoiceCiara LaVelleApr 23, 2013
When the story runs off the rails and crashes headfirst into a too-perfect ending, it's because Bay was led astray by the same things that got the Sun Gym Gang into this mess in the first place: superficiality, ambition, and the belief that reality just isn't good enough. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 25, 2013
It's Bay World. And after an hour of Pain & Gain, it felt more like "Pain & Pain." Read full review
33
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezApr 24, 2013
Pain & Gain fails at being an entertaining and ridiculously fun Michael Bay movie and curdles into something much more tone deaf and obnoxious. Read full review
25
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanApr 25, 2013
The whole thing is played for laughs that almost never come. To be sure, the film has its moments, but they’re few and far between. Read full review
25
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 25, 2013
Bay seems to have been gunning for something along the lines of "Blood Simple" or "A Simple Plan," but Pain & Gain is just plain simple. Read full review
25
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 25, 2013
Pain & Gain, a jokey but fatally tone-deaf true-crime caper, plays like “Fargo” for idiots. Read full review
25
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinApr 24, 2013
Any pretensions of satire, moral ambiguity, or social commentary get lost in a hurricane of empty, mindless spectacle. Read full review
20
Time OutKeith UhlichApr 28, 2013
It would be kind to call this satire; what it comes off as is a pummeling, testosterone-fueled sensory assault that the film then makes minor variations on for two very long hours. Read full review
20
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyApr 22, 2013
The story is told in a hammer-on-anvil manner that evinces no gift for social satire or sharp cultural insight. Read full review
12
Rolling StonePeter TraversMay 2, 2013
In between scenes of the muscleheads torturing their victim, Bay indulges his taste for treating women as sluts and grisly brutality as a nifty excuse for a cheap laugh. Pain and Gain is personal all right. You leave these characters with the distinct impression that they're Bay's kind of people. Read full review
0
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 25, 2013
Michael Bay's absurdist comedy is all pain, no gain and an utter monstrosity. It may be the most unpleasant movie I've ever seen, and I'm not forgetting "Freaks," which Pain & Gain resembles, come to think of it. Read full review
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