10 Movie Biopics That Were Far Too Easy On Their Subjects

It should be clear that yes, a hardened criminal did fry a corpse's hands in a barbecue to try and eliminate the fingerprints. The only way to approach such a horrific fact, honestly, is to look at it as a disturbingly sick joke. Our minds just aren't meant to process that kind of brutalization soberly.

But even that detail, which Pain & Gain director Michael Bay gleefully gawked at, didn't quite happen the way it did in the film. First, it was not Dwayne Johnson's character. There was no official Dwayne Johnson character, rather he was an amalgamation of two convicts, Jorge Delgado and Mario Sanchez. Neither participated in the barbecue, nor was it done on a proper grill, but makeshift oil cans by Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg).

What Bay seemed to have mistranslated when he studied Coen Bros. crime films in attempt to add his own in the pantheon was that their colourful cast of characters that often brutally murdered each other in slapstick was the fact that they were fictional. There was no real-life equivalent for Steve Buscemi's Fargo character who wound up in a wood chipper. Not so with Frank Griga and Krisztina Furton. Their murder, in actuality, wasn't the slapstick gag fest as depicted in the film. In fact, it was premeditated.

There are plenty of other details the film sacrifices, some even to the film's benefit. Criminals should appear inept, particularly when they are. It doesn't make real murder funnier.