My favourite performance by the legendary wrestler-turned-actor still happens to be Dwayne Johnson’s darkly humorous part in the action-packed Michael Bay satire Pain & Gain, which was released more than ten years ago. Despite his charismatic on-screen persona and immense star power, Johnson isn’t regarded as an especially great actor. He is unlikely to receive an Oscar nomination in the Best Actor category. However, just because he isn’t as good as Marlon Brando doesn’t mean that he is a bad actor like Tommy Wiseau.

To provide his best performance, Johnson just needs to land the ideal part in the ideal production with the ideal director. His parts in movies like Skyscraper, Baywatch, and Rampage were unmemorable, but none of them possessed an auteur filmmaker’s vision, a gripping plot, or a distinctive aesthetic. Johnson gives what I think is his best performance in Pain & Gain, which combines a gripping true-crime story with Michael Bay’s distinctive, beautifully dark comedy approach.

In Pain & Gain, Dwayne Johnson could have given his best performance to date.In Pain and Gain, Dwayne Johnson gave it his best in the gym.Although Dave Bautista and John Cena are continuously pushing themselves to take on new roles, try out new techniques, and explore character types they haven’t done before, Johnson is regularly criticized for playing the same character in every movie. But The Rock is a master of his trade. His charming voiceover as Maui in Moana won him millions of fans; he portrayed rescue helicopter pilot Ray Gaines in the suspenseful disaster thriller San Andreas with a charming sincerity; and he devoted himself to passion-project roles like Hercules and Black Adam.

But perhaps his best performance to date was in Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain as bodybuilder, ex-con, and born-again Christian Paul Doyle. The Sun Gym gang, a group of bodybuilding criminals who abducted, tortured, and killed victims in Miami in the mid-1990s, served as the inspiration for the deliciously sinister comedy Pain & Gain. Additional proof that Bay works best on a smaller budget was provided by Pain & Gain. From Bad Boys to Ambulance to 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, all of the best films starring Michael Bay were produced for far less than $100 million.Dwayne Johnson standing by a grill in Pain and Gain

The comedy starring Michael Bay Fit The Rock with Pain & Gain The Rock’s comedy skills and Bay’s blatant, theatrical mockery complemented each other flawlessly.Bay’s ostentatious, flamboyant brand of humour was a wonderful fit for Johnson’s comic skills. Johnson is not the type of funny actor who has the sensitivity of a Jason Bateman, Fred Willard, or Catherine O’Hara to convey the gentle awkwardness of human contact. Rather, the absurdity of his personas makes him giggle. In The Fate of the Furious, Johnson made a lot of people chuckle when he used his hands to divert a missile. He received a lot of laughter in The Other Guys when he leaped from a skyscraper’s roof and “aimed for the bushes.”

This sense of humour and Bay’s handling of the antics of the muscular killers in Pain & Gain went hand in hand. Johnson was put in ridiculous scenarios in Pain & Gain, such as using a charcoal grill to burn the fingerprints off the severed hands of the murder victims. Johnson gave the role his all, as do all the greatest comic actors, and the outcome may have been the best performance of his career.Dwayne-Johnson-as-John-Hartley-from-Red-Notice-