A Comical look at a True Story, Pain & Gain isn’t Funny to Some

By Christopher
“Flood the Drummer”® Norris

If you’ve never read the story of the “Sun Gym Gang”
as chronicled by writer Pete Collins in his 1999 three-part series
called Pain & Gain, which was published by Miami’s New Times,
then don’t rely on Director Michael Bay’s New movie “Pain &Gain,” which touts “This is a true story,” to give you
authentic chronological accounts of the case; nor its preceding
murders, tortures, and kidnappings. You can however rely on a ton of
laughs from the movies loaded cast which stars Mark Wahlberg as the
“Sun Gym Gang” mastermind Daniel Lugo, Former WWE Champion Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson as the hilarious “Born Again” coke addict
Paul Doyle (based on Jorge Delgado) and Anthony Mackie as the
“sadistic sidekick” Adrian Doorbal. Traditionally, true stories
about murder and torture don’t involve a ton of laughter, a
multitude of penis jokes, a Big Black dildo that has a reoccurring
role or a BBQ featuring human hands; yet Bay’s new take on the
“longest, most expensive case ever tried by Miami’s State
Attorney’s Office” not only tickles the funny bone for 130 minutes,
it has also angered many – particularly the survivors and those who
investigated the crimes nearly two decades ago.

.

“The way they
tell it made it look like a comedy,” said Marc Schiller, author of
“Pain and Gain: The Untold True Story.” Marc
Schiller, whose book was released in January, said he does not
approve of Michael Bay movie’s portrayal of the criminals. The
Huffington Post’s Matthew Jacobs reports, “The film presents the
criminals, known collectively as the “Sun Gym Gang,” in a
somewhat lighter, more comedic tone than Schiller finds appropriate
based on his harrowing experience.”

“You also gotta remember that not
only I went through this, but certain people were killed, so making
these guys look like nice guys is atrocious,” explains March
Schiller.

The cast of Pain & Gain have
been very outspoken that they are not making light of what the
victims went through, they are merely telling a bizarre and absurd
story that just so happens to be true. “In no way shape or form do
we make light of the victims or what happened to them. But looking at
the circumstances of the situation, it’s comical,” states Pain&
Gain co-star Anthony Mackie, who gained nearly 30 pounds for the
role. He never heard of the story before
being cast as the “Caribbean Adonis” Adrian
Doorbal, and feels that nothing about this case seems realistic. That at no point in time could he imagine something
like this happening. “The
victims just became byproducts of the ridiculousness of the story. So
I get it, I understand why they reacted to movie being made, but
Michael (Bay) dealt with their (Sun Gym Gang) demise in the classiest
way it could possibly be dealt with, if the story was going to
be dealt with at all,” adds Mackie.

Breaking free from his “Transformer
Machine” and feeling the need to “do something different,”
Director Michael Bay rounded up two of Hollywood’s elite actors
(Wahlberg and Johnson) and a few $250 Go-Pro cameras and told the
story of a gang of local bodybuilders with a love for steroids,
strippers and quick cash.

Mackie told me the story of an Oscar Party a few years
ago, recounting how he met Bay and eventually landed the role in this film, which features
explicit bloody violence, crude sexual content, nudity, language
throughout and drug use. The two of them stood by the bar, exchanging jokes. “We
cracked up for hours. A year later he hits me up and says ‘You’re
funny; people should see you do comedy.’ He sent me the script and
told me that Dwayne and Mark were in it.”

Unlike most “true stories” this
cast of characters chose not to interview the survivors or the
criminals themselves, opting rather to rely on headlines and oracles
from those who knew them as associates.  “I just really didn’t want to sit
around with someone on death row. It didn’t seem like a good
Saturday to me” explains Mackie of his reasoning for not strengthen
the portrayal of his character with a series of meetings with the
real Adrian Doorbal. Mackie tells me “it was never discussed about
meeting with the survivors or those close to the case.”

PLOT:
Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is a regular bodybuilder who works at
the Sun Gym along with his friend Adrian Doorbal (Anthony Mackie).
Sick of living the poor life and working the standard 9-5, Lugo
concocts a plan to kidnap Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), a regular
at the gym and a rich, spoiled businessman, and extort money from him
by means of torture. With the help of recently released criminal Paul
Doyle (Dwayne Johnson), the “Sun Gym Gang” successfully gets
Kershaw to sign over all his finances. But when Kershaw survives an
attempted murder by the gang, he hires private investigator Ed Du
Bois (Ed Harris) to catch the criminals after the Miami Police
Department fails to do so.

 

Despite not meeting with the survivors,
and those that committed the acts, this film tells a great story and
is really one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time. If
you turn easily to blood and gore, you may have your hands over your
eyes for a large part of the movie. But still, it’s worth the price
of admission. Those behind Pain & Gain muscles up the courage to
turn tragedy to comedy, and love or hate it, this movie will have you
die laughing – pun intended.

Thanks for reading. Until
next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for
JUSTICE!™

Source: TBO Inc®

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