Michael Bay Has Made Some Junk, but These 3 Movies Are Classics

Michael Bay is treated like a dirty word sometimes or, more specifically, two dirty words. A dirty term? He’s not widely loved for everything he’s done, and to be fair, he has missed a few times as a feature filmmaker. His early work was in commercials and music videos, mostly, and he was suited to those formats. Bay is bombastic, even when he’s not filming literal explosives going off, and he paints with broad strokes, as a director, meaning he’s well-suited to telling simple stories in less than a minute (in the case of most commercials), or in a handful of minutes (in the case of most music videos). But by the mid-1990s, he’d entered the world of feature filmmaking, and was almost instantly notorious. Bad Boys was received decently enough, and Armageddon, though very silly, does have a certain blunt charm to it, and also benefits from now being old enough to feel nostalgic. But most people will cite Pearl Harbor as an early Michael Bay miss, and it was far from the first.

Some of his Transformers movies are a bit infamous, even if the first isn’t too bad for what it is, though those movies did occupy a great deal of his time, as he ended up directing five of them. Since then, he’s gone back to making fairly broad action movies, which is probably Bay’s wheelhouse, though when he goes for comedy that’s as over-the-top as his action, things work surprisingly well… sometimes. But sometimes is better than no times, and for all the talk about Michael Bay duds, it’s important to recognize that some of his movies are genuinely good. If you want to consider yourself too highbrow for some of them, that’s fine, you’re welcome to and no one can really stop you, but the following films are worth giving a chance, if you’re anything less than entirely skeptical about everything Michael Bay’s touched. These three movies all belong to the action genre, primarily, but they’re not just action movies, with a couple being big, dopey comedies, and the third being an unconventional prison film (of sorts). Yes, there aren’t too many movies being mentioned below, but these are the ones he’s done that are closest to great. They’re great for what they are, and are probably the three movies that stand the best chance of converting non-believers to the Church of Michael Bay.

3

‘Pain & Gain’ (2013)

Mark Wahlberg screaming outside in Pain & Gain (2013)

Image via Paramount Pictures

Probably the most divisive movie that’s going to get talked about positively here, Pain & Gain works if you approach it knowing the entire thing is going to be in bad taste. It’s also perhaps one of the most cynical movies made in recent memory, being about terrible people doing terrible things terribly, in the sense that they’re out of their depths and very good at making a bad situation worse. And that works, or it does most of the time if you’re the Coen Brothers, but Bay takes more of a risk here by playing a violent real-life story for laughs, and there’s a level of bad taste to that which might be difficult for some to overcome. Put another way, you’re either going to be offended and reject the movie/turn it off outright before it finishes, or you’re going to be morbidly entertained and then feel kind of rotten about it afterward. It’s provocative in a way that arthouse filmmakers often get away with doing, but not so much Bay, since some people have pigeonholed him.

Pain & Gain wants to wallow around in filth, and it feels like the more shocked you are, as an onlooker, the happier that filthy thing’s gonna be.

Of course, if you think Pain & Gain is a failure of a farce, and too offensive for its own good, maybe you’ll feel like Bay’s a pigeon who should stay in his hole. But there’s also something admirable about him really going for it, upping another soon-to-be-mentioned movie as far as tastelessness goes. Also, it’s even more of a risk/outlier for one of its stars, Dwayne Johnson, who’s shockingly good at playing the sort of role here he usually stays away from. This came out right around the time he was a big part of the Fast and Furious movies, which reshaped and defined most of the roles he’d gravitate towards post-Fast Five, but Pain & Gain is one of those rare glimpses at a different side of Johnson (see also the even more bizarre Southland Tales). Pain & Gain would also make a good double feature with The Wolf of Wall Street, which came out the same year. Martin Scorsese’s film is better, of course, and more nuanced, but Pain & Gain wants to wallow around in filth, and it feels like the more shocked you are, as an onlooker, the happier that filthy thing’s gonna be. As a heightened, in-your-face, gross-out action movie, it sure is something, but if you’re looking for anything that’s not that, tread carefully.

2

‘Bad Boys II’ (2003)

Will Smith aiming a gun in each hand in Bad Boys II

As mentioned before, Bad Boys was the first Michael Bay movie, and it came out in 1995. That one didn’t feel entirely like a Michael Bay movie, with a bit more restraint and a little less bombast than one might be used to seeing in a film by him. But by 2003, when it came time to make a sequel, Michael Bay very much had a directorial voice, plus a fair few critics who said that voice was too loud. But one of the things you kind of have to respect about Bay is that he doesn’t really care, and he certainly doesn’t back down, and Bad Boys II felt like him going for broke and making the most Michael Bay movie possible. Pain & Gain does have an extra layer of cynicism and nastiness to it, thanks to being inspired by true events, but Bad Boys II has a very similar level of bad taste running through the whole thing. And there’s a lot of space for that bad taste to run through, seeing as Bad Boys II clocks in at an almost comically long 146 minutes.

Maximalism is the word of the day here, with Bad Boys II being a buddy cop movie pushed to its limits in just about every way. The plot is what you’d expect, and much of the humor is very broad, but so much of this works, it’s a bit wild. Martin Lawrence yells, Will Smith pouts, cars crash, disgusting things happen, F-bombs are dropped, things explode, people get shot, people are cruel to each other, and on and on for a while until the movie just sort of ends. Bad Boys II almost feels like a parody of the first Bad Boys, and part of the magic is not knowing whether that’s intentional or not. Where it counts, though, the film is actually pretty satisfying when it comes to action, with an extended car chase here, partly along a bridge, being especially great. It’s easily the best (or the least bad) of all the Bad Boys movies, and it’s also one of those not-too-common sequels that exceeds the first in terms of quality.

1

‘The Rock’ (1996)

Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage looking at a green tube in The Rock

How’s this for a high-concept premise: a group of rogue soldiers take over Alcatraz Island, and threaten to do massive damage to the city of San Francisco unless their demands are met. So, in The Rock, there’s a ticking clock straight away, the villains are more than capable (and have solid motivations, at least some of them), and the setting is the always iconic Alcatraz prison. But instead of being about people trying to escape the island, back when it was an active prison, The Rock is about getting the help of a reluctant man who once escaped from Alcatraz to break into it, in effect, and thwart the rogue soldiers before they can carry out anything truly destructive and deadly. And if that’s not enough, Sean Connery plays that ex-escapee, and if you go with the theory that his character is also an older James Bond, then that might well make it even wilder and more entertaining.

If that’s not enough, Nicolas Cage is also one of the leads in this movie, right around the time that he was doing surprisingly well as an action star (see also Face/Off and Con Air). So, The Rock is all the right kinds of dumb, rolled into one, and it leans into the more over-the-top stuff with the right forcefulness. It’s playful and goofy without being an outright comedy, so it’s not always easy to tell whether you’re laughing with or at the movie, and when that happens, does it really matter? The Rock is generally accepted to be the best Michael Bay movie, and is part of the Criterion Collection, which is impressive considering that company isn’t usually affiliated with Bay-like movies (for what it’s worth, Armageddon is also part of the collection). But everything clicks and slides into place nicely with The Rock, and you don’t have to have an appreciation for morbid/dark humor to enjoy this one the way you might have to if you want to get something out of Pain & Gain and Bad Boys II. The Rock’s a dopey but also very high-quality action movie, taking the ridiculous and making it weirdly cool. It might not give your brain much of a workout, but you’ll have a great time. Give the ol’ brain a rest and just have a blast, because The Rock kinda rocks.