Patriots Day Review

4 out of 10

Cast:

Mark Wahlberg as Tommy Saunders

Kevin Bacon as Richard DesLauriers

John Goodman as Ed Davis

J.K. Simmons as Jeffrey Pugliese

Michelle Monaghan as Carol Saunders

Alex Wolff (Dzohkar Tsarnaev

Themo Melikidze as Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Jake Picking as Sean Collier

Jimmy O. Yang as Dung Meng

Rachel Brosnahan as Jessica Kensky

Christopher O’Shea as Patrick Downes

Melissa Benoist as Katherine Russell

James Colby as Billy Evans

Michael Beach as Deval Patrick

Khandi Alexander as interrogator

Vincent Curatola as Thomas Menino

Directed by Peter Berg

Patriots Day Review:

For hundreds of years now, Patriots Day has meant a day of celebration in American society. Various celebrations occur, including parties being hosted, bars opening their doors to hundreds of patrons looking to commemorate their fallen ancestors, and of course, there’s the annual Boston Marathon. All of this is meant to recognize the importance of the Battles of Lexington and Concord; the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. Tired of their mother country governing their land from across the pond, American patriots rebelled and took a stand against Great Britain, sparking the first time in our history that we truly began to gain our independence and grow into the great country that we are today.

Sadly, in 2013, a few selfish individuals decided to use this festive day to their advantage, and set off bombs in a highly-populated area during the peak of the Boston Marathon. Their malicious actions wound up killing three people, wounding 264 more, and forever leaving a stain of hatred on the day which once signified the strength and unification of the American people. This is the story of the Patriots Day Boston Marathon bombing.

Flash forward to 2017, where writer/director Peter Berg has teamed up once again with his favorite leading man Mark Wahlberg to reenact the horrific events that occurred just three years prior, in their latest film collaboration, simply titled Patriots Day. The movie narrates what happened that day and the days that followed, detailing the accounts of not only the bombing, but the shooting and gunfire in the streets, and ultimately the capture of the suspects, as well.

We Americans have a strange need to turn horrific real-life events into fantastical action-adventure movies. Perhaps it’s because we need to feel like we won something in order to heal. Perhaps it’s because the tragic events are easier to swallow if we romanticize them. Whatever the reason for people’s demand to see recent real-life disasters dramatized with prolific actors, when it comes to director Berg’s reason for fulfilling this need, it seems like it’s just for profit.

This film feels like what would happen if someone hired Transformers-era Michael Bay to direct a biopic. There’s lots of shots of American flags, a plethora of over-the-top cheesy out-of-place dialogue, and little heart to go along with it. At some points in the film, the storytelling becomes so phony that it’s hard to tell if this was intended as a true drama or a parody movie. Is it Peter Berg behind the wheel, or is it Matt Stone and Trey Parker?

Whereas in real life several law enforcement officers came together to pursue the manhunt of Chechen brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and ultimately succeeded in capturing and containing the men who set off their homemade bombs in the streets of Boston that day, the film culminates all of the officers into one prodigious superhero body, portrayed by Mark Wahlberg, as lone officer Tommy Saunders. Perhaps it’s because it’s easier for audiences to root for a single character rather than a team of men in uniforms. However, for a movie that claims it’s trying to convey the importance of the united American people, it seems much more likely that director Berg simply wanted another opportunity to gush over his beloved Hollywood icon, invincible shooter Wahlberg.

It’s not all bad, though. There is some credit due to the fact that Patriots Day does a somewhat decent job of showcasing how the community of Boston suburban dwellers came together to help solve the case and pinpoint the final miscreant, but it would feel a lot more genuine if it weren’t so focused on how star Mark Wahlberg ultimately saves America from certain destruction and terrorism yet again. This movie parades itself as a triumph of the human will, but it is actually just a showcase for Wahlberg’s relentless superhuman bravery.

We deserve better than this. This movie is a distasteful mockery of the American spirit, poorly written and sloppily constructed for no reason other than to sell tickets and collect profit at the box office, as it slyly takes advantage of the misfortune of a large group of people. It’s not an anti-war movie, it’s not an honest, no-holds-barred portrayal of what went down that day. It makes no real declaration and it doesn’t send any sort of well-crafted thought-out message, other than the elementary notion that terrorism is bad and America is good. In fact, it doesn’t even do that great of a job of telling the truth. This reality TV-esque piece of American gung-ho propaganda sure does seem to fit in well in this gunslinger-driven, shoot first, ask questions later conservative attitude that seems to embody much of the nation’s attitude today, but it truly does feel insulting to the real-life citizens affected by this terrible hardship.