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Dwayne Johnson Gets Pumped Up for 'Pain & Gain'

Dwayne Johnson is one of the few star athletes who can actually act well in movies, and he proves that again in Michael Bay's "Pain & Gain." He talks about what drew him to the role as well as the amount of physical training he had to do.

Many like to laugh at athletes turned actors because while they may excel in their chosen sport, that doesn't necessarily mean they will be equally successful on stage and screen. Dwayne Johnson, however, has proven to be an exception as he continues to get better and better with each movie he's in. In "The Scorpion King," he proved to have a strong screen presence that went on to serve him well in "The Rundown" and "Fast Five," and he gave one of his best performances to date in "Snitch" as John Matthews, a father who goes undercover for the DEA so that he can get his son out of prison. Now he stars in "Pain amp; Gain," Michael Bay's action comedy based on the Miami New Times articles about the Sun Gym Gang who kidnapped a rich businessman in the hopes of extorting him for money so that they could live the American dream.

Johnson plays Paul Doyle, an ex-con who has clearly spent hours upon hours in the prison gym. A former drug addict, Doyle has since become a born again Christian who yearns to do good in life. Still, when his friend Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) comes to him with a plan to kidnap a spoiled rotten businessman Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), Doyle cannot resist the pull towards a life of crime.

"Pain amp; Gain" plays around with Johnson's image as a bodybuilder, but in an interview with Erin O'Sullivan of Yahoo Movies, he explained that there was something more than the physical training that made him want to play this character.

"I was really fortunate because I was coming off of 'G.I. Joe: Retaliation,' and I was coming off of 'Fast amp; Furious' at that time too. So a lot of those projects supported and fostered the type of training I was doing," Johnson told O'Sullivan. "The biggest thing with a movie like this -- the biggest departure (for me) was the vulnerability and showing this type of vulnerability, and playing a character who is easily influenced and who's just out of prison and looking for salvation."

The movie has garnered quite a bit of controversy as it is based on a true story that involved a brutal kidnapping, torture and murder. The survivors of the Sun Gym Gang's crimes have been very open about their opposition to "Pain amp; Gain" as they don't want the audience to sympathize with the characters played by Johnson, Wahlberg and Anthony Mackie as they are all based on real life killers. None of this was lost on Johnson who told Colin Covert of the Star Tribune that he said a prayer every day for the victims of the gang's crimes, and that the story hit close to home for him as he lives in Miami where the crimes took place.

"The story rocked our city. It was a crazy time for us down there then. It's painful for many people to remember it even to this day," Johnson told Covert. "It's been a passion project of Michael Bay's for years, and he had a very clear idea of how to present it; a kind of 'Pulp Fiction-y,' fast-moving version that shows what boneheads these criminals actually were. Of course, whenever there is a story based on actual crimes, you have a responsibility to tell it in a way that's respectful, we were fully aware of that."

Now you'd think that after doing several action movies in a row that Johnson would have all of the muscle and physical training he'd ever need, but even on a movie like "Pain amp; Gain" which cost only $25 million to make (way below the budgets of Bay's "Transformer" movies), the actor and pro-wrestler still had a strict training regimen to follow. Johnson discussed his training schedule with the website Bodybuilding.com, and it makes you wonder how he found all that free time to work out.

"My routine for this film was training six times per week with George Farah (an IFBB professional bodybuilder and trainer). Many people who go on Bodybuilding.com know who my strength and conditioning coach is. I also have a training coach in Dave Ramsey," Johnson told the website. "This was a hell of a prep. For a movie like this, that revolves around the world of bodybuilding and the culture of bodybuilding-that we love, by the way, and that we grew up on-the prep was a good 8-10 weeks, six workouts per week, training twice per day. I did my cardio in the morning."

According to USA Today, Johnson added 12 to 15 pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-4 frame body, and he maxed out at 250 pounds. As a result, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that he recently had emergency hernia surgery even though it was attributed to the WWE match he wrestled in last month. To all this, Johnson said the following:

"When you're young, you think you're invincible. When you're older, you have to start listening to your body."

Over the past few years, Dwayne Johnson has proved that he can handle comedy, drama and action with equal success, and he's become one of the true bona fide action stars in movies today. We look forward to seeing him again soon in "Fast amp; Furious 6" in which he will reprise his role of Luke Hobbs, and he also has "Hercules: The Thracian Wars" to look forward to as well. At this point there should be no doubt that, for an athlete turned actor, Johnson is the real deal.

SOURCES:

Erin O'Sullivan, "Pain amp; Gain: Mark Wahlberg amp; Dwayne Johnson Talk Bulking Up For Action Movie," Yahoo Movies, April 20, 2020.

Colin Covert, "Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson talk about new Michael Bay movie 'Pain amp; Gain,'" Star Tribune, April 24, 2020.

"Pain amp; Gain Exclusive With Mark Wahlberg And Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson," Bodybuilding.com, April 22, 2020.

Bryan Alexander, "Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg pumped for 'Pain amp; Gain,'" USA Today, April 25, 2020.