Less painful and more gainful than Bay’s Transformers movies.

The last Michael Bay film I watched was 2011’s bloated, incoherent toy commercial “Transformers: Dark Of The Moon” – a film that sticks in my memory only for Bay’s ability to plumb new depths of unlikeability from perennially offputting ‘star’ Shia LaBeouf. Having seen how poorly he used  $200 million, I was curious to see how he would handle a modestly budgeted true story.

“Pain & Gain” has attracted a fair deal of controversy because of the recent nature of the story it tells and questions over taste have arisen given many of those involved are still alive. Well, if questions of taste were really at the top of everyone’s agenda, I doubt Michael Bay would have got the gig. At best, this is “based” on the true story – characters are amalgamated, specifics subtly altered and additional embellishments made for dramatic reasons. Indeed, when the movie itself pauses during a particularly bizarre scene to remind you that it’s “still a true story”, it’s not actually being 100% truthful, making it a sort of meta-joke on the whole “true story” aspect.

Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a juiced-up bodybuilder with a spectacular lack of empathy and self-awareness who develops a grotesquely distorted sense of entitlement after encountering a glib positivity lifestyle coach. Using his gym as a stalking ground, Lugo plans to achieve the American Dream by the most direct route possible: identifying someone who has everything he wants and taking it from them. It doesn’t take him long to decide that his client, Victor Kershaw (played with a sleazy self-importance by Tony Shaloub) is the perfect mark. Befriending and recruiting his fellow trainer Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie), Lugo completes his team by bringing in Paul Doyle, a recently released born-again ex-convict cocaine addict played by Dwayne Johnson.

Initially, the film encourages us to root for our dumb but earnest crooked trio as they incompetently plan and carry out their kidnap and extortion plot and for a while, it all seems to be going well. However, the three of them manage to elevate the principle that criminals always make mistakes to an art form. As things start to spiral out of control, their bumbling ineptitude gives way to increasingly desperate and brutal tactics to maintain the lavish American dream lifestyle they have grown accustomed to and any lingering sympathy you may have for Lugo and his gang will evaporate.

As dark as the true story of Daniel Lugo and his crimes are, this is a very, very funny film. The comedy is black as pitch but I’ll be damned if I didn’t laugh out loud – a lot. To be fair, towards the end, I was wincing as much as I was laughing but as shocking as the story is, the well-selected cast wring every moment of absurdity and comedy from the story. Yes, here and there you can still see the signs of the Michael Bay we have come to know: slick, fast editing, shiny luxury cars, scantily clad women, sexist and homophobic jokes but shorn of the ability to blow up the GDP of a small country, Bay’s usual excesses are curbed and the film is better for it. Indeed, freed from the need for gratuitously OTT GCI action set-pieces, Bay manages to show a fair degree of visual flair, especially in one scene where the events of different rooms of a house are shown by a clever tracking shot travelling in a slow circle from room to room.

Mark Walbergh reminds us that he is capable of more than playing just the confused and angry guy, giving real vitality to the single-mindedly driven and dimly ruthless Daniel Lugo. Anthony Mackie’s romance with Rebel Wilson’s nurse provides the film with some of its sweeter moments while Rob Corddry rounds out the supporting cast as gym owner and accomplice John Mese. A suitably craggy Ed Harris gives the film some much-needed grit as a retired Private Detective who becomes the only person to believe Victor Kershaw’s story and ultimately brings down Lugo and his gang. But by far and away the most impressive turn in this film is from Dwayne Johnson. Taking a break from reinvigorating ailing franchises (don’t be surprised if he turns up in the sequel to “Star Trek Into Darkness”), Johnson really shows how good an actor he is, and how sharp his sense of comic timing is. His spiralling descent from gentle born-again Christian giant to coked-crazed armed robber is both comically and convincingly poignant. Once dismissed as a second-rate Schwarzenegger substitute, Johnson shows here he is so much more than that.

At just over two hours, it’s not a short film but it never feels padded or sluggish as Bay and his winning cast keep the story barrelling along. An unexpected, albeit possibly guilty, pleasure “Pain & Gain” is a hilarious, occasionally gruesome, brutal crime thriller that’s well worth your time.