One of Peter Berg's better films, Patriots Day stands as one of those disaster films that seeks to inspire and celebrate more than warn and terrify. In as much as it captures the terror and anxieties gripping the Boston area during the events of the 2013 Marathon bombing, it succeeds admirably. In as much as it honors the heroes and victims of the same events, it is bluntly heartfelt and reasonably sentimental. Yet as an action thriller, or even a historical drama, it lacks much heft or logic.
Perhaps, you say, I'm trying too hard to qualify or categorize a film rather than letting it be itself and work on its own terms. You'd be right if it weren't a Berg movie, Berg being one whose films tend to skate along by virtue of a) their ensemble casts who usually do very little by way of acting, b) their thickly emotional plots and grassroots-style dialogue (replete with often racially problematic rhetoric -- remember The Kingdom?), and c) a focus on spectacle and thrill instead of the drama of real-life stories. And all those exist here.
A huge cast is great, until you realize that nobody is being used to their potential and most of the action rests on Mark Wahlberg, who, by the by, is playing a totally fictional character. Why even have a historical drama/thriller that centers on a fake person, when there were so many real heroes during the events? To tie the strands of the film together? It seems to me that they are all bound together anyway, simply by nature of the situation and the theme of Boston community; any narrative issues, then, would be the fault of an unfocused script or a confused director. The rest of the cast is nice and all, and I love seeing John Goodman and Kevin Bacon, for example, popping in for a few scenes, but I have to wonder if they even help the film. A crucial message by the end of the film is that of "Boston Strong", the everyday heroes and nobodies who helped and saved each other. It's a little hard to remember that when JK Simmons stands out so well from otherwise indistinguishable officers. I wonder, then, if the film should have worked a little harder to fill up its dramatis personae with less stars and more strangers. It sure worked for United 93.
The film works as a thriller, no doubts there. A streamlined script cuts away most of the crap, and we find ourselves immediately in the middle of a small web of lives, preparing for the annual holiday and festivities. It doesn't take long before the marathon begins, and by then it's all pins and needles until the end of the film, after a brief but ferocious manhunt. The film, though it unfortunately spends far too much time on Wahlberg and his antics, does a nice job of observing the general paranoia and anxieties of both civilians and law enforcement during this time. And while the film wastes precious story time on action -- disparate images of violence and carnage -- it effectively provides an atmosphere and sensation of chaos.
I should mention a couple of highlights in the film. The ending presents us with the real-life survivors and heroes of the Boston Marathon, and while it is no doubt emotionally powerful, it is also difficult to swallow in a film so full of itself. Perhaps with less stars, less focus on spectacle, or more fleshed-out dialogue, we might care more about these individuals and relate to them better. Instead, I found myself distanced and a little annoyed; after all, if the filmmakers wanted to make a documentary, they should have made the whole film one, not just the last five minutes. Come to think of it, I totally think they should have just made a documentary. It would certainly have honored its subjects better.
That said, the two best sequences in the film came in surprising turns. One was delivered by Jimmy O Yang as Dun Meng, the student who was carjacked and abducted, and the time in which he and the terrorists ride together in the car are the most tense in the picture. The other was delivered by Melissa Benoist and Khandi Alexander as Katherine Russell and an FBI interrogator, respectively, when the former is brought in for questioning about her involvement. It's a brief but brutal scene, beautifully written and densely nuanced, and will leave you gasping for breath -- perhaps even more than the suspect.
It's a solid picture, and one that is sensibly aware of its importance and relevance. I had my issues with it, you'll have yours. And while it's not a "great" movie, it stands as a testament to the power real-life stories can have on us. Heroes that walk among us, everyday instances of courage and kindness, and community in the face of tragedy. There are much better films about terrorism, about Boston, and about the police, and there are much better ways a film about this particular tragedy could have been handled. But, as the film we got, this one is definitely worth a watch.
IMDb: Patriots Day
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