I know, I know… it makes me sound so fair weather. After all, she’s been in the biz for what seems like an eternity. I remember all the Orlando brouhaha, the talk about her “androgynous” looks and “gender bending” aura. I even recall her minor moments in Adaptation. and Vanilla Sky (sadly, I have yet to experience The Beach all the way through). No, the first time I can recall being really impressed with Tilda Swinton was when she played the archangel Gabriel in the oddball comic book movie Constantine. She was so luminous, so ambiguously a-human and completely heaven sent that I was compelled to know more about her. Sadly, what I came across (a bunch of self-serving arthouse malarkey with names like Conceiving Ada) did little to impress me.

A few weeks back, we found ourselves lamenting the apparent fact that 2013 was starting out with a whimper, not a box office/blockbuster bang. We even speculated that, unless something came along to salvage said season, the annual cinematic dumping ground of January through April would be one of the worst ever. Let’s just say that we were wrong. Wrong. 100% WRONG. In that piece, we speculated on the titles we thought had the potential to come along and possibly, maybe save the Spring, and again, we were off base. Sure, we mentioned some of the movies below, but for the most part, we talked about things—Oz the Great and Powerful, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Olympus Has Fallen, The Host—that either ended up being good (the first film listed) or glorified crap. Even more interestingly, we hit a few of April’s offerings right on the head.

You’re going to hear it a lot this week, both in defense of, and as a slam, against, it’s based on a true story strategies, and with a mere $20 million dollars in pre-summer movie season receipts, many will cite it as a commercial cautionary example. Still, as a kind of sloppy shorthand, critics and complainers have decided to label Michael Bay’s crime caper comedy Pain & Gain “the non-thinking man’s Fargo” or, even worse, “the Coen brothers on steroids.” Neither comparison is wholly accurate, since the artistic triumph of the siblings’ Oscar winning 1996 film is light years away from Bay’s chaotic, cobbled together movie mess. Aside from the narrative basics, there’s barely any real link at all, and even comparing plotlines is a massive stretch.

It represented the end of the ‘60s, a sour send off to the whole ‘peace and love’ vibe consuming the country.  The Tate-LaBianca Murders in Southern California spawned hysteria in the region, the famous and the not so known cowering over who would be next in the sights of these the unknown spree killers. When it was finally discovered that a failed musician and his hippie commune “family” were behind the crimes, the press and pundits had a field day. They blamed everything on the leader, a diminutive demon called Charles Manson, (no matter who actually essayed the slaughter) and thus a legend was born.

We know we are in trouble from the opening beats. Our lead, a lunkheaded personal trainer named Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is being chased by the cops, apparently for doing something horrendous. As he runs in slow motion, the camera occasionally ‘becoming’ part of his streak to freedom, an internal monologue begins explaining things. At a certain point, the voice over narrative switches perspective and Daniel riffs on the most influential people in his life - and they are all fictional characters. Tony Montana. Rocky Balboa. Some infomercial guy. No real life human heroes, just similarly stunted guys he’s idolized since he saw them on the silver (or TV) screen.