The Michael Bay movie Pain & Gain opens with the line: "Unfortunately, this is a true story." But the film took some notable creative liberties.
The 2013 film Pain & Gain, starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Anthony Mackie, tells the story of the Sun Gym Gang — bodybuilders who turned to crime in their quest for the American Dream in 1990s Miami. The movie mixes dark comedy with chaotic crimes, including botched attempts at kidnapping, extortion, and murder. These scenes are played for laughs, but the true story behind Pain & Gain is far more sinister.
While the film softens the gang members’ personalities, making them seem more misguided than monstrous, those who knew them have said the movie doesn’t capture their true nature. The gang’s leader, Daniel Lugo, was said to be a cold and manipulative sociopath. His partner, Adrian Doorbal, was reportedly a cruel enforcer who enjoyed inflicting pain. Together, they and other gang members committed a series of truly horrifying acts.
While Pain & Gain certainly makes for an entertaining and outrageous film, the true story of the Sun Gym Gang is anything but funny.
Pain & Gain’s Daniel Lugo And The Chilling True Story About The Sun Gym Gang’s Leader
Metro-Dade Correctional Facility/Paramount PicturesThe real-life Daniel Lugo and actor Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of him in Pain & Gain.
In Pain & Gain, Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, a gym-obsessed dreamer chasing wealth at any cost. His portrayal adds humor and charm, making the character strangely likable despite the crimes he commits.
But those who knew the real Lugo say he was no misguided dreamer, but instead a con artist who preyed upon others to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself. Still, the movie had it right that he was driven by a desire for money.
Lugo’s surviving victim, businessman Marc Schiller, has often described the horror of being kidnapped, extorted, tortured, and left for dead by the gang. Notably, he remembered Lugo as a “lethal manipulator” who could switch from being unnervingly calm to violently unpredictable with little warning.
“In reality, Lugo was a very difficult person to like. He almost had a neon sign on his forehead that said: ‘Don’t Trust Me.’ He was a conman and that is all he knew,” Schiller said in an interview with The Guardian. “After my kidnapping… he would go into wild mood swings, one minute a nice guy and the next a raving lunatic. You never knew which Lugo you were dealing with.”
By glossing over Lugo’s darkest traits, the film avoids showing just how cruel he could be — and the lengths he would go to get what he wanted.
Marc Schiller’s Kidnapping — And Pain & Gain’s Comedic Spin On The True Story
AP/Suzette LaboyMarc Schiller, the real victim behind Pain & Gain’s Victor Kershaw, says his true story was more terrifying than the film.
Marc Schiller’s real-life kidnapping, extortion, and attempted murder were depicted in Pain & Gain. Many details of his ordeal were accurate, including his torture in a warehouse, him signing over his money to the gang members while under duress, and his miraculous survival after the gang tried to murder him in a staged, fiery car crash. However, in the film, Schiller is renamed “Victor Kershaw” — and he is memorably described by Wahlberg’s Lugo as “a criminal prick who deserves bad things to happen to him.”
As Schiller tells it, his real-life ordeal was far more horrifying than what was portrayed in Pain & Gain. After he was abducted by the Sun Gym Gang, he was tortured for weeks in a warehouse until he was forced to sign over $1.2 million of his money. The gang then force-fed him alcohol before staging a drunk-driving crash and then setting his car on fire. They even ran him over after that, in an attempt to ensure his death, but he somehow survived.
Miami Police DepartmentThe Sun Gym Gang placed Marc Schiller into the driver’s seat of this car and set it on fire.
But the movie takes a lighter tone while telling this story, portraying Schiller’s nightmare as a bizarre, chaotic crime that gets out of hand. Furthermore, Schiller’s character Kershaw is depicted as obnoxious and boastful, clearly meant to make the audience root for the gang’s bumbling scheme.
Schiller criticized this portrayal, saying that it trivializes and misrepresents his suffering. He also expressed his discomfort with Pain & Gain marketing itself as a true story: “The only thing that really rings true for me is the title. My pain really did result in a lot of people’s gain. Especially Hollywood’s.”
The Controversial Portrayal Of The Murder Of Frank Griga And Krisztina Furton
FacebookKrisztina Furton and Frank Griga were killed by the Sun Gym Gang.
Marc Schiller wasn’t the only one who had a problem with Pain & Gain’s portrayal of the Sun Gym Gang’s “true story.” Zsuzsanna Griga, the sister of victim Frank Griga, also spoke out against the film. Frank Griga — who was targeted for extortion because of his successful phone sex business — and his girlfriend Krisztina Furton were both murdered by the Sun Gym Gang.
In Pain & Gain, the gang’s planned extortion of Frank Griga goes awry when a violent fight breaks out, leading to Lugo accidentally killing Griga when a weight falls on Griga’s head. Meanwhile, Furton is also accidentally killed with a fatal dose of a horse tranquilizer, which gang member Adrian Doorbal (played by Anthony Mackie) had injected her with to keep her calm.
The gang then struggles to dismember the two corpses with a chainsaw before tossing the body parts into a swamp.
Pain & Gain amplifies the gang members’ real-life difficulties with dismembering the bodies and disposing of them for comedic effect. For example, the gang’s gas-powered chainsaw broke at one point because they forgot to fill it with motor oil. And a chainsaw got jammed in Furton’s hair.
Through it all, the Sun Gym Gang are depicted as clumsy criminals whose difficulties with their crimes are played for laughs. Zsuzsanna Griga described this portrayal of the gang members as “ridiculous.”
“It’s horrible what happened to [my brother and his girlfriend],” she said. “I don’t want the American public to be sympathetic to the killers.”
It’s little wonder why some have criticized Pain & Gain for turning grisly crimes into slapstick comedy, arguably downplaying the horrifying reality.
Furthermore, in real life, it was not Lugo who killed Griga, but Doorbal. During the real fight, Doorbal either suffocated him or broke his neck, and chillingly, it was likely no accident, contrary to what’s shown on film.
The Truth Behind Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Paul Doyle
Paramount PicturesDwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Mark Wahlberg in Pain & Gain.
One of the most memorable characters in Pain & Gain is Paul Doyle, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Doyle, a born-again Christian turned cocaine-addicted criminal, brings humor, chaos, and heart to the film.
Surprisingly, Paul Doyle never actually existed in real life.
Instead, Doyle is a fictional character who was inspired by multiple real-life members of the Sun Gym Gang. According to The Film Stage, the main inspirations were Carl Weekes, Jorge Delgado, and Mario Sanchez.
Delgado, who owned the infamous warehouse, was the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Schiller. Sanchez, a weightlifting instructor, inspired Doyle’s muscular build. Weekes, on the other hand, was a much smaller man who struggled with addiction and reportedly hoped to find Jesus.
But none of these men truly resembled Doyle in appearance. And none of them showed the moral hesitation in violent situations that defines Doyle in the movie. So even though Doyle leaves the gang after an especially violent incident, this moment of moral reckoning never happened in real life.
More Invented And Exaggerated Scenes In The Pain & Gain Movie
Metro-Dade Correctional FacilityDaniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal were both sentenced to death for their crimes (though Doorbal’s death sentence was later overturned). In total, seven members of the Sun Gym Gang went to prison for their involvement.
Clearly, Pain & Gain takes plenty of creative liberties, turning the grim reality of the Sun Gym Gang’s crimes into something darkly comedic. And the crimes weren’t the only things that got the Hollywood treatment.
The movie shows Adrian Doorbal as a nervous sidekick more worried about his impotence than violence. The real Doorbal was reportedly volatile, cruel, and may have even been at odds with Lugo’s leadership.
The storyline involving Bar Paly’s character Sorina Luminita (based on a real woman named Sabina Petrescu) isn’t true to real events either. In Pain & Gain, Lugo passes her on to Doyle, but the real Petrescu stayed loyal to Lugo throughout the gang’s crimes. She only betrayed him to the authorities after she learned that he had lied to her about being a CIA agent.
The “ninja” disguises that the gang members wear in the movie are also exaggerated. While the gang did wear black outfits and hide under blankets in Schiller’s yard during failed attempts to kidnap him, they never donned the elaborate ninja costumes that were shown in the film.
Even the gang’s infamous warehouse got the Hollywood treatment. On screen, the warehouse is filled with male sex toys, but in real life, it was just a dull storage facility and distribution center.
While Pain & Gain boasted plenty of over-the-top antics that made it entertaining — and drew from many real crimes that the Sun Gym Gang committed — the true story is far less theatrical and far more chilling. And arguably, the real story had no need for embellishment.
After reading about the true story that inspired “Pain & Gain,” learn about the real stories that inspired some of Hollywood’s best horror movies. Then, check out some striking photos of 1980s Miami.
