Pain & Gain is a 2013 American black comedy crime film directed by Michael Bay and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. It is loosely based on a 1999 series of Miami New Times articles by Pete Collins about the activities of the Sun Gym gang, a group of bodybuilding ex-convicts convicted of kidnapping, extortion, torture, and murder in Miami in the mid-1990s. It stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie as members of the gang, with supporting roles played by Tony Shalhoub and Ed Harris. The title is a play on the fitness adage "no pain, no gain".
Pain & Gain premiered in Miami on April 11, 2013, before Paramount Pictures released it in theatres on April 26. The film received mixed reviews; it was praised for its script, direction, and performances, but criticized for its historical inaccuracies. A commercial success, it grossed $86 million worldwide against a $26 million production budget. Marc Schiller, the Sun Gym gang's primary victim who was depicted in the film as Victor Kershaw, sued the production company over his portrayal.
Plot In 1994, ex-con and bodybuilder Daniel Lugo is hired by Sun Gym owner John Mese as a manager. Daniel befriends trainer and bodybuilder Adrian Doorbal, who was recently rendered impotent from steroids. He envies the earnings and lifestyle of Victor Kershaw, a member he begins to train. Inspired to be a "doer" by motivational speaker/playboy Jonny Wu, Daniel plans to extort Victor for his assets. He recruits Adrian, who seeks financial resources to pay for erectile dysfunction treatment. He manipulates Paul Doyle, another ex-con and born again Christian struggling with drug use, into joining the plan. Paul, who had been staying at a church after leaving prison, assaults the priest at the church for making homosexual advances on him and becomes more intertwined with the gang.
The "Sun Gym gang" kidnaps Victor, taking him to a small warehouse. Although Victor identifies Daniel, the scheme proceeds as planned. Under duress, Victor makes calls to provide explanations for his disappearance and transfers his assets to Daniel. Mese is bribed to notarize documents in Victor's absence. After collecting Victor's money and assets, the gang attempts to kill Victor. They stage a drunk driving crash, burn his car, then run him over.
Unbeknownst to the gang, Victor survived and is hospitalized. He informs the police, who dismiss his story because of Victor's manner, blood alcohol level and him being from Colombia, a South American country known for drug trafficking. Victor contacts Ed Du Bois, III, a semi-retired private investigator, who warns Victor to leave the hospital. Victor takes his advice just as the gang arrives and hides in a cheap motel.
The gang members spoil themselves with Victor's riches. Daniel takes over Victor's car and home and begins integrating himself with Victor's neighbors; Adrian marries Robin, the nurse treating his impotence; Paul abandons his sobriety, blowing his money on cocaine and Sorina, who is a stripper and Daniel's ex-girlfriend who believes he and Daniel work for the CIA.
Ed tails them and goes on to meet Daniel under the guise of a personal training client.
After Victor furiously calls Mese about his stolen money, the gang identifies the motel he stays at. They go to kill him, but discover that he has already checked out. They learn of Ed's link to Victor and plan to kidnap him, but the plan falls through.
Paul and Adrian, having gone broke after excessive spending, plan another kidnapping with Daniel. They target Frank Griga, owner of a phone sex operation. They lure Griga and his girlfriend Krisztina Furton to Adrian's to propose an investment scheme. The discussion breaks down when Griga points out that he distrusts Daniel and his friends due to their obvious lack of knowledge on running a business. During the ensuing fistfight, one of Adrian's weights falls on Griga's head, killing him; Adrian accidentally kills Krisztina by overdosing her with horse tranquilizer in the chaos.
They dismember the bodies and dispose of them in a swamp. Paul, perturbed by the violence Daniel promised would not happen, leaves the gang and returns to the priest's church. The police learn of Griga and Krisztina's disappearances and, with evidence from Ed, plan to arrest the Sun Gym gang.
The police arrest Paul at the church, Adrian at home, and Mese at the Sun Gym. Daniel flees in Victor's speedboat. Deducing his destination, the police, Ed, and Victor fly by helicopter to the bank in Nassau that Victor uses as an offshore account. Daniel slips away from the authorities, but gets run over by Victor and is finally arrested.
At the trial, Paul gives a full confession incriminating Adrian and Daniel. Robin, upon discovering her husband's criminal activities, divorces and also testifies against Adrian along with Sorina. Daniel and Adrian are sentenced to death, while Paul and Mese are sentenced to 15 years. Paul served 7 years and rededicated himself to Christianity while Mese died in prison.
Cast
Comparisons between the film and actual events
Multiple media properties compare and contrast details shown in the film versus actual events. History v. Hollywood also shows the headshot photograph, name, birthdate, and birthplace of the principals in a "Reel Face" v. "Real Face" lineup. As David Haglund and Forrest Wickman wrote in Slate's culture blog, Browbeat: "the film more or less adheres to a very rough outline provided by the novella-length, three-part, highly detailed series written by Pete Collins and published in the Miami New Times over a decade ago. Not surprisingly, many details, and a number of significant characters, are dropped from the movie. A lot of new, fictional detail – and one largely made-up character – takes its place. When the movie first tells us that it's a true story, we're seeing something that didn't happen. When we're told it's 'still a true story,' we're watching one invented character watch a semi-fictional character do something that sorta kinda took place."
The film portrayed the Sun Gym gang as consisting of three primary members: the Irish-American Daniel Lugo, African-American Adrian Noel Doorbal, and Samoan/African-American Paul Doyle; and two accomplices (John Mese, the Sun Gym owner and Miami Shores accountant who notarized Kershaw's — in reality, Marc Schiller's — documents for Lugo; and stripper Sorina Luminita — based on Sabina Petrescu — whom Lugo claimed to have recruited to serve as the gang's femme fatale). In reality, the gang was much larger, Daniel Lugo was of Puerto Rican descent, Noel Doorbal was a native of Trinidad, and Doyle's character is a composite of several real life individuals of different nationalities who were not depicted in the film, such as Carl Weekes, Jorge Delgado, and Stevenson Pierre. Additionally, Doorbal's real-life girlfriend (Cindy Eldridge) helped scrub blood off Doorbal's condominium walls after Doorbal had dismembered Griga and Furton's bodies. Unlike Sorina, who in the film Lugo passes on to Doyle, the real-life Sabina and Lugo remained together as a couple and became engaged, and they fled together to the Bahamas (with Lugo's parents). Additional real-life players in the events are detailed in the Miami New Times article, "Sidebar: Cast of Characters".
In the film, Victor Kershaw states he was born in Bogotá, Colombia. His real life counterpart, Marc Schiller, was born in Argentina. Schiller and Lugo did not befriend each other; Schiller actually distrusted Lugo. It was Delgado (who worked for Schiller, as did Delgado's wife) who befriended Lugo and targeted Schiller, and it was at Delgado's (not Schiller's) warehouse where the kidnappers held and tortured Schiller for a full month, while extorting him and before trying to kill him.
Sabina Elena Petrescu (portrayed onscreen by Bar Paly as Sorina Luminita), in addition to being a Solid Gold center stage stripper, was a Miss Romania finalist in 1990 and a former Penthouse model. Lugo really did convince Petrescu that he was a CIA operative, who was working to kidnap enemies of the U.S. government. In the film, a blindfolded Victor Kershaw recognized Lugo by his cologne. In reality, Marc Schiller recognized his voice.
The car with which the gang tried to kill Schiller, by crashing it (into a construction vehicle in the film; into a utility pole in reality) and then by setting Schiller and it ablaze, was a Toyota 4Runner, not a BMW. In contrast to the film, the gang did not secure Schiller's seat-belt before crashing the car, and Schiller did not survive the crash from inside the car; rather, Schiller bailed out of the car, rolling onto the ground, before it hit the pole. When crashing the car and setting Schiller ablaze failed, the real-life gang ran over Schiller's body twice, but with a Toyota Camry, not a van.
The movie portrays Paul Doyle as first running into a demeaning Frank Griga at a strip club where Luminita works. In reality, Doorbal first discovered Griga when Doorbal spotted a picture of a Lamborghini Diablo in a photo album belonging to his Hungarian stripper girlfriend, Beatriz Weiland (not portrayed in the film). He asked her who owned it. It turned out that Griga was one of Weiland's former generous boyfriends. It was she who introduced Griga to the gang. In reality, Frank Griga was also Hungarian and had a noticeable accent, which his on-screen portrayal lacks.
The gang did meet at Frank Griga's home as in the movie. In reality, they met three times; the final instance at Doorbal's Miami Lakes apartment, where the murders actually took place. In reality, Lugo did not kill Griga—Doorbal did, by first cracking the side of his head with a blunt object, then strangling him with a headlock, and finally injecting him with Rompun. Krisztina Furton ran to see what had happened, and screamed. Lugo covered her mouth and tackled her. She had no gun, contrary to the movie portrayal. She was bound, then Doorbal injected her with the drug. Overall, Doorbal injected her three separate times, instead of twice.
Miami New Times reporter Francisco Alvarado reports the facts associated with the power tools purchased by the gang, the cause of the chainsaw's failure, and the ensuing details, some of which differed from their film portrayal:
They bought a gas-powered chainsaw from Home Depot to cut off body parts but forgot to fill it with motor oil, so it broke the first time they cranked the power tool on. Lugo returned the chainsaw to Home Depot, demanding a refund. He left the home-improvement store with an electric Remington Power Cutter, which came with a one-year guarantee to 'handle all your cutting chores quickly and easily.' He went back to the warehouse and handed the chainsaw to Doorbal, who took charge of the grisly dismemberment. When the power tool's teeth got caught in Furton's hair, Doorbal had Lugo chop off her head with a hatchet. The two murderers then used a curved blade and pliers to remove the faces and teeth off the heads.
The movie depicted Lugo and Doorbal dumping the body parts in several barrels into a lake located somewhere in what appears to be the Everglades. In reality, Lugo, Doorbal, and "Little Mario" Gray dumped Griga and Furton's torsos-in-drums into a drainage ditch in southwest Miami.
Details in the scene in which Paul was shown incinerating the victims' severed hands on a barbecue grill (to remove the fingerprints) were changed; in reality, Lugo did the grilling, using a steel drum with an iron grate laid on top, not a barbecue grill. Lugo tossed Griga and Furton's hands, feet, and skull fragments onto the grate, doused them in gasoline, and began to grill. When Delgado returned to the warehouse, he yelled at Lugo, who reluctantly agreed to move his operation from in front of the warehouse to the rear alley.