R | 2h 13m | Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Action, History | 2017
The third of five collaborations between producer/leading man Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, “Patriots Day” is arguably their finest collective effort to date.
Based on the nonfiction book “Boston Strong” by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, “Patriots Day” is an action drama chronicling the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and its immediate aftermath.
Berg presents the action in quasi-documentary style (frequent jittery camera work and “found footage”). The movie is also augmented with actual news stock and smartphone still and video photography captured by witnesses present at the event.
Superb Preamble
Berg and his two co-writers were beyond wise to wait until nearly the 30-minute mark of the movie to depict the two bombings. Along with Saunders’s character, Berg includes a superbly constructed extended opening sequence, where others who are figuring into the bigger picture later on start their day with no idea of what’s to come.There are two married couples, one with a child, another without, an MIT campus police officer, a cop in the neighboring town of Watertown (J.K. Simmons), an Asian college student, Tommy’s nurse wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan), and radicalized Eastern European immigrant brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze) and his malleable younger brother Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff).
In another brilliant move, Berg captures the two bombs exploding in real time, 12 seconds apart, as observed by Saunders. This distant, less-is-more approach only increases the dread, uncertainty, and cruel randomness of the acts themselves. There’s no slow-mo, no distorted visuals, and no swelling backing score—just the event itself from a distant eyewitness perspective.
For the next 30 minutes, the narrative plays out like the opening salvo from “Saving Private Ryan.” It is total mayhem—complete bedlam. EMP and police are racing to rescue and evacuate the wounded while dealing with onlookers and participants of the marathon who are still unclear about what has happened.
Full-Tilt Procedural
From this point forward, “Patriots Days” is a full-tilt police procedural, and it continues to move along as a you-are-there, fly-by-the-seat type of affair. The governor of Massachusetts (Michael Beach), Boston police chief (John Goodman), Boston mayor (Vincent Curatola), and an FBI agent (Kevin Bacon) swoop in and take over the investigation.
‘Truth Is Stranger ...’
Even after they knew they had been discovered, the Tsarnaevs remained in Boston when they should have gone on the lam. They compound the issue by botching the theft of a pistol from the MIT officer. Then they follow it up by carjacking an SUV owned by the Asian student to whom one of them brags about carrying out the bombing. These guys did everything they could to get caught.While taking more than two hours here, the filmmakers took full advantage of every second without any hint of narrative repetition. Berg chose to not include details of the Tsarnaev’s upbringing, and it was a smart move. Their choice to murder innocent people in the name of “religion” is all we need to know.
Many Boston-area residents (and critics) felt the movie was made too soon after the event and complained about the fact that Saunders was a fictional composite character. I understand these complaints, as they hit close to home, but I don’t agree with them.
Having an actor such as Wahlberg play a fictional lead in an otherwise true story is not unusual, and in this instance, it only enhances the impact of the movie. Every event depicted in “Patriots Day” actually happened in the manner presented. For most audiences, that’s more than enough.
