Tragedy strikes on April 15, 2013, when two bombs explode during the Boston Marathon. In the aftermath of the attack, police Sgt. Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg), FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) and Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) join courageous survivors, first responders and other investigators in a race against the clock to hunt down the suspects and bring them to justice.
Patriots Day, the new docudrama about the Boston Marathon bombing from director Peter Berg, traffics in one of the most pernicious and difficult to dispel misconceptions of the city: that there is a Wahlberg on every corner. Mark Wahlberg plays Tommy Saunders, a sergeant in the Boston Police Department. Unlike the other figures in the film—from Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (Michael Beach)—Saunders is a fictional character, a composite. The appeal of such a character is clear: It allows the filmmakers to ground the story of the bombing and its aftermath in the experiences of one man.
result, however, is unintentional comedy underlying scenes of real tragedy. Here is Wahlberg at the race finish line, rushing to the aid of bloodied victims. Here is Wahlberg at the investigation command center, apparently the only Boston police officer familiar enough with Boylston Street to re-create the crime scene. Here is Wahlberg, taking a statement from the young man the Tsarnaev brothers carjacked in the waning hours of their flight. Here is Wahlberg in Watertown, exchanging fire with the brothers during their last stand. Here is Wahlberg discovering Dzhokhar’s hiding place in a winterized boat. Here is Wahlberg at Fenway Park, shaking hands with David Ortiz before the slugger takes the field to rally Hub fans’ shaken spirits.
This is our fucking city,” Ortiz famously said that afternoon, but in Patriots Day it’s Mark Wahlberg’s city—both in the sense that he’s everywhere and in the sense that this is a film content with the charming, if chuckleheaded, cartoon of the Boston local that Wahlberg has regularly inhabited throughout his career. A film, in other words, in which not one but two characters demonstrate their devotion to a romantic interest by picking them up something from a local coffeehouse called Dunkin’ Donuts.
It’s not necessarily a strike against the movie that it’s more Boston Strong than Boston Subtle. If you want a nuanced portrait of the area, you can drive up Route 1, jump on 128 just past Herb Chambers Cadillac, and take the exit for Manchester by the Sea. But Berg’s treatment of the attack, and the ensuing hunt for its perpetrators, is hardly more sophisticated than its sense of place. The movie’s re-enactment of the events of April 2013 is at times skillful, but it never offers an idea—about terror or a city’s resilience—to overcome the queasy feeling that an attack that left scores wounded and several dead is being replayed purely as entertainment: a morning of horror transformed, in four short years, into a night at the movies.
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