I was intrigued by the not so recent interview by Bishop Barron (?) and actor Shia Lebuf regarding St Padre Pio.  Last week I finally saw the movie.  As I should have expected I was VERY disappointed…practically scandalized…by Lebuf’s angry and sometimes foul mouthed portrayal.  I spent sometime in Italy and was adopted by a family for a few months in a small town just outside of Naples.  They had statues of Padre Pio everywhere. Papa told me that when he was a boy, he and his buddies hopped a train to Fogia to see the holy Friar of San Giovanni.  They waited in the confession line for hours…to the point of exhaustion for these young teenagers (13-14).  They had heard stories of the Saints ability to read souls and wanted to see what “fortunes” he would reveal to them.  When the Saintly man finally entered the church, he moved slowly and quietly passed the hundreds who waited in line.  They could feel the anticipation and their heart race as he approached.  When he got to them he suddenly stopped.  They were stunned and nervous.  He wagged his finger at them and sternly said  “This (confession) is no circus side show.  If you want your sins forgiven go home to your parish priest” and shewed them out of line.  The good Padre read their souls indeed!  

So with that said, and from what I read, I knew St Padre Pio could be very stern but I thought Lebuf’s portrayal was over the top to say the least.  I will not let my kids watch it and have told others to stay away.

Has anyone else had the same reaction as me?

Sir Alec Guinness (who played Obi Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars", 1977) would have played a good Padre Pio, back in the day.

My mother pointed out that in 1977 Padre Pio was very popular (she worked at TAN Books, and the Padre Pio book was selling by the thousands), and I'm sure Hollywood wanted to capitalize on that by having a character with "Padre Pio" vibes. I think she's right.

Perhaps.  But I firmly believe that actors do have say in what and how they choose to fulfill their roll.  Mel Gibson has made some horrible, offensive movies.  I hear Traditional Catholics make excuses for him “He’s just acting…He uses his money for good things…he sponsors his own chapel…he made the Passion of the Christ…yada, yada, yada…”.  All just excuses to rationalize sin. 

I might give Lebuf a mulligan since he is new to Catholicism…but…???

I guess my overall question was, have I been misinterpreting Padre Pio as a humble, yet sometimes assertive friar, courageously battling demons in his cell…or was he a sometimes brash, even foul mouthed, angry man while battling these demons?

Well, a Catholic actor should just turn down those scandalous roles (such as Gibson's, for which there's no excuse, since he was raised Traditional Catholic), but evidently LaBeouf was already "signed" and it was during his work preparing for the movie that he converted, so, as you said, I'd give him the mulligan on this one.  We'll have to see what he does going forward.

I can't comment on the portrayal of Padre Pio in the move, since I haven't seen it, but Padre Pio was sometimes gruff ... though never known to be foul-mouthed.  As for what Padre Pio was really like, I suspect that'll be largely lost to history (and to the ecclesiastical authorities who were looking into him), since there's probably no other figure who's been more mythologized than Padre Pio, and to whom more fake quotes have been attributed.  Combine that with the phenomenon of the internet, whenever I see, "Padre Pio did ..." or "Padre Pio said ..." I find there's a 90% chance it's not true.

Sir Alec Guinness (who played Obi Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars", 1977) would have played a good Padre Pio, back in the day.

Indeed he would have, especially given that Sir Alec converted to Catholicism after a moving experience while portraying Father Brown in 1954's The Detective. (Details here.)