10 Based On True Story Movies That Never Happened

Martin Scorsese's masterfully wrought, epic crime thriller The Irishman is told with all the heft and conviction of an unassailably true story, and it was absolutely presented as such to audiences. But the fact of the matter is far less reliable.

The Irishman is adapted from Charles Brandt's 2004 book "I Heard You Paint Houses," which consists of mafia hitman Frank Sheeran's apparent confessions about his involvement with the Bufalino crime family and especially his murder of labour union leader Jimmy Hoffa.

Yet ever since the book's publication, Sheeran's claims have been wildly disputed by experts. Shortly before The Irishman's release, Slate published a fantastic piece detailing the non-factual probability of Sheeran's story.

Until the book's publication, history barely remembered Sheeran at all, but with a dishy claim that he was secretly a major fixture in the mafia and even offed Jimmy Hoffa himself, Sheeran suddenly entered the annals of crime royalty.

One of the few surviving mobsters from the era called Sheeran "full of s**t," and that he "never killed a fly... The only things he ever killed were countless jugs of red wine."

A former FBI agent who worked the case also deemed Sheeran's tale "baloney, beyond belief," and even prominent outlets that reviewed the book expressed doubts over many of its juicier claims.

It doesn't make The Irishman any less of an excellent movie, but it's absolutely best watched while taking its "true crime" insinuations with a truckload of salt.