“I don’t just want everything you have, I want you not to have it.”

Quite possibly one of the most bone-chilling monologues in modern cinema came from a juiced up, financially frustrated Mark Wahlberg, guided by filmmaking’s top hedonist and pyrotechnics guru, Michael Bay. While his previous films had our heroes making drug busts that would shut down the East Coast or stopping an asteroid from hitting the Earth, Bay’s more recent centerfolds see their fulfillment come in the form of a fully absorbed mercenary archetype.

If you watch Bay’s filmography enough, you’ll see that his main goal seems to be capturing his, or the masses’, sense of the American Dream. While these notions are dependent upon heroics early on (The Rock, Armageddon), it is clear to see that things have taken a left turn in the latter decade in his career, as has Bay’s relation to the world of ‘go-getters’ (or “Do-er,” in Jonny Wu’s case) that the West has cultivated. By comparing two of his late career films, set almost two decades apart, the careful viewer can discern an interesting exploration of what has happened to America culturally, socioeconomically, and psychically.

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Excess For the Sake of Excess

     Paramount Pictures

The recent Bay efforts could be categorized most easily as the anti-anything story. He doesn’t try to employ basic villains and pure evil into his narrative, there’s still some room to relate (or at least half-empathize) with the situational torment our protagonists are given. For Pain & Gain’s Daniel Lugo and his partners, their main motif is a dissatisfaction with the arduous nature of their lives thus far. They’ve put in the blood and sweat to perfect what’s most important to them, hoping that the rest will fall into place with time (and enough recognition of their pectoral muscles). When this fails to come to fruition, we’re now placed in a situation where rooting for their methods becomes a little tricky. Money is always the mission for Bay, but the road to glory has gotten dicier in recent memory.

Pain & Gain follows up Lugo and company’s frustration with a plan of absolute psychotic idiocy. A personal trainer at Miami’s Sun Gym, Lugo decides to take advantage of a client he’s discovered has a surplus of money in offshore accounts. Lugo, after several failed attempts, proceeds to fall ass-backwards into the fortune of a man he has no business delving into. The plan is detailed by Lugo almost as thoughtlessly as it is executed, and thus the archetype of the man who thinks he’s done more than enough to earn his share of the spoils is fleshed out. It’s a half-idealized, half-warning of economic strife and the mental gymnastics used to try and escape a seemingly never-ending sense of disdain for the way things are. If you want something, you take it, by any means possible.

Daniel Lugo and Ill-Suited Inspiration

Lugo’s sense of self-worth, while bountiful, is found in the wrong places more and more as the film progresses. Mantras of self-help and motivational gurus are revered like spiritual beacons of inspiration for a man who’s had his dreams both uplifted and crushed by a mid-century Americana that’s demonstrated the value of hard work, sometimes not always in the best light. He cites gangster films like Scarface and The Godfather as sources of influence, with their notes of ill-fate conveniently glossed over.

While it’s easy to simply read Lugo’s character progression as one of slow wits and directionless passion, perhaps the more productive viewpoint is to see how misled those in his position have become. The film, set in 1994, occupies a specific set of western ideals that are no longer applicable to the present generation. Pain & Gain depicts a generation of adults sold on maximalism, milestones, and success that bankrupted the future, where millennials and Gen Z were left frustrated in the dust of so-called trailblazers with no regard for what would come after them. Rugged individualism preached to the masses, with no real regard for its consequences on community leaves those born out of the sphere of privilege feeling like their dissatisfaction warrants something this malicious.

With dreams of splendor and a lack of connection to any outlet, what we’re left with is a vapid reimagining of what the American dream should, or could encapsulate. The Bay signature of drawn out shots replicating the male gaze and almost disgusting affluence somehow aesthetically coincide with the brutality of methodology employed by Lugo and his cronies to get to a point of nauseating pleasure.

Ambulance: Michael Bay’s Modern America

     Universal Pictures

Fast-forward about 30 years. Bay’s Ambulance sees its characters dropped into 2022 with the same vexed complexion filtering the camera. Although complacency in intent is replaced with intent unfulfilled, that base idea of grabbing the world by the throat and ripping what you want from its mouth is still violently prevalent. The film follows Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Danny Sharp (the always great Jake Gylenhaal), a down on his luck veteran and current blue collar worker and his professional criminal brother, respectively.

Unlike the previous film, Will’s done more than enough to earn his due diligence, but is dangerously similar to Lugo in how willing he is to do anything to acquire his sought-after ideal. This on-the-run thriller prefers to see its heroes with valiant intent begin to question their methods, as if the unjustifiably self-confident characters of Pain & Gain grew up and developed doubts.

Michael Bay’s Impossible Vision

For both films, and for Bay, the American dream reads as something that, in the realm of modernity, is virtually unreachable without malice. Apprehension may plague some who try that path, but eventually the ones starving for that ideal will end up on top. The conservative ideal of pulling up your bootstraps and doing it yourself takes on a completely different meaning than intended for Bay, especially in the face of a neoliberal, late capitalist America that prefers to see its wealth pre-established, and its honor earned by the book. In these instances it feels that our protagonists are born already out of time to achieve anything, being left with the way things are as the best consolation.

Given that, the disgruntled, sometimes selfish male archetype finds an explosive new avenue in Bay’s films to pursue the life of excess they feel so entitled to. Money, muscles, and mistresses make up the men in Bay’s late films about the warping and corruption of the American dream, some impossible mirage people keep fighting for.