PATRIOTS DAY
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It’s fitting to remember that as tragic as the Boston Marathon Bombings of 2013 were, and they were, three people lost their lives. Two more were killed during the ensuing manhunt.
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Contrast that to bombings in London, Madrid or Istanbul; shootings in Orlando, Paris or Quebec; or the terror madness in Nice. All instances where significantly more people died. So why the international outpouring? Why a film chronicling those events and not another? Because after 9/11 it was America’s second most significant terror event (if you discount the plethora of mass murders in schools as somehow less terrible). It engages Hollywood’s flag wavers, plus they get to make a film with Boston homeboy Mark Wahlberg.
Granted Peter Berg’s feisty account of the tragedy is mercifully light on flag waving and polemic, preferring to create a police procedural along a straight-forward timeline – race day, explosions, manhunt – with Wahlberg’s Officer Saunders in the thick of things. There’s a touch of Eastwood about the film that sticks to basics, lets men be men, and distinguishes the story with an occasional cinematic flourish (notably the bombing itself, and a second set piece when police and fugitives shoot it out). Heroics are for another day.
That said, he also engages in familiar formula as we meet inevitable victims set to pleading piano (before and after for added mawkishness), along with the rote friction between Boston police (led by John Goodman) and the FBI (led by Kevin Bacon). It is a drag on the story until yet another inevitability of pre-credits, to-camera interviews with the real survivors. Ironically, this quickly establishes itself as among the most interesting moments of Patriots Day for its depth and honesty.
There are a few occasions when characters touch on the greater threat, such as Saunders and a colleague pondering how they could defend themselves against terrorism, and where it would take them. Pleasingly, their conversation didn’t set off the propaganda radar but did gain unexpected poignancy in the dawn of the Trump era. Yet these scenes also reinforced the feeling that Patriots Day is already a film from another time; that like its subject matter quickly fades as atrocity piles atop atrocity, whether conducted by forces external or internal, civilian or government. Where it leads, well, that’s the real question.
// COLIN FRASER
Previewed at Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney, on 30 January 2017
Granted Peter Berg’s feisty account of the tragedy is mercifully light on flag waving and polemic, preferring to create a police procedural along a straight-forward timeline – race day, explosions, manhunt – with Wahlberg’s Officer Saunders in the thick of things. There’s a touch of Eastwood about the film that sticks to basics, lets men be men, and distinguishes the story with an occasional cinematic flourish (notably the bombing itself, and a second set piece when police and fugitives shoot it out). Heroics are for another day.
That said, he also engages in familiar formula as we meet inevitable victims set to pleading piano (before and after for added mawkishness), along with the rote friction between Boston police (led by John Goodman) and the FBI (led by Kevin Bacon). It is a drag on the story until yet another inevitability of pre-credits, to-camera interviews with the real survivors. Ironically, this quickly establishes itself as among the most interesting moments of Patriots Day for its depth and honesty.
There are a few occasions when characters touch on the greater threat, such as Saunders and a colleague pondering how they could defend themselves against terrorism, and where it would take them. Pleasingly, their conversation didn’t set off the propaganda radar but did gain unexpected poignancy in the dawn of the Trump era. Yet these scenes also reinforced the feeling that Patriots Day is already a film from another time; that like its subject matter quickly fades as atrocity piles atop atrocity, whether conducted by forces external or internal, civilian or government. Where it leads, well, that’s the real question.
// COLIN FRASER
Previewed at Event Cinemas, George St, Sydney, on 30 January 2017
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STARRING
Mark Wahlberg
Kevin Bacon
John Goodman
Michelle Monaghan
DIRECTOR
Peter Berg
SCREENWRITER
Peter Berg
COUNTRY
USA
CLASSIFICATION
M
RUNTIME
133 minutes
AUSTRALIAN
RELEASE DATE
February 2, 2017
Mark Wahlberg
Kevin Bacon
John Goodman
Michelle Monaghan
DIRECTOR
Peter Berg
SCREENWRITER
Peter Berg
COUNTRY
USA
CLASSIFICATION
M
RUNTIME
133 minutes
AUSTRALIAN
RELEASE DATE
February 2, 2017
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