Michael Bay, who has made a career out of Dumbing Down action films, turns around and makes a black comedy satirizing Dumbed Down America. Not since Clint’s Unforgiven have we seen such a profound conversion. The film’s last words summarize the point: “Bad scene: the American Dream.” So, too, the opening shot, where Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) works out on a perch sticking out of a huge billboard (when he should be hiding from the cops).
The film is based on the true story of three Florida bodybuilders who kidnapped a wealthy mogul and extorted all he had. But its real subject is the danger and stupidity of those who fall for the myth of the country’s exceptionalism and entitlement. As the victim Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub) tells gang leader Lugo, he’s doomed to fail because he hasn’t taken the trouble to get educated.Instead he has cultivated the vain myth of the body beautiful and the power of positive thinking. He’s been seduced by a huckster who sells the religion of being a Doer, not a Don’t-er, regardless of what is being done. It’s Self-Help Yourself run amok. They destroy themselves by buying the myth that anyone can get rich in this political system; that’s how Margaret Thatcher and recent Republican presidents drew the votes even of people their policies betrayed. Like our heroes, the gulls imagine themselves joining the wealthy -- so they destroy themselves to find a shortcut there.
Each of the three “heroes” has a weakness at the heart of his ostensible strength. Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie) hides his penal inadequacy by inflating his physique. Paul Doyle (Dwayne Johnson) is a reborn Christian who lapses back into coke. Like director Bay, Wahlberg and Johnson brilliantly play against their familiar personae as sharp, intuitive action heroes. In contrast, Ed Harris comes on as the retired private eye who -- as Ed Harris characters usually do -- lives out a proper ethical code and restores justice. In this Swiftian landscape he and his wife are the film’s only solid characters. They're the only ones satisfied with what they have honestly gathered.
What makes this film more biting than a simple comedy of three laughably stupid gangsters --and the comically inadequate cops who should be catching them -- is the proliferation of American flags and eagles and calls to US patriotism. This is not about three musclebound stooges but about the culture that believes the bromides of US optimism. As America’s classic gangster genre established, crime is just another form of capitalism, perhaps the most essential one. It posits the every man for himself ethic and the moral responsibility to get rich any way one can. These three dopes stand in for the much brighter brokers and bankers who destroyed the economy and escaped not just unscathed but bonused.
As each major character narrates a portion of the story, the thugs reveal an astonishing self-unawareness and unearned confidence. The claim to look powerful and confident is undercut by their Scooby Doo seat covers. The plethora of available sexpots and the men’s own rippling muscles satirize the nation’s macho and futile pretense. A gunshop scene with another militant Christian neatly encapsulates the NRA’s union with the Tea Party.
As a black comedy the film combines non-stop sharp laughs with several scenes of gore. If the comedy dramatizes the heroes‘ incompetence, vanity and unfounded confidence, the gore reminds us of the danger of such belligerent ambition. Especially when the subject is not just a few dumb gunsels but a nation with an army.
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