Review: “Patriots Day”
I think it is safe to say that most people want to feel happy and proud about the country we live in. We want to see those tragic scenes in a film turn to triumph. It’s just human nature. While this feeling is nice, I think that there are too many filmmakers who cheaply try to display this on camera. They know that people will love it, so they’ll put more effort into the crowd pleasing aspects rather than the detail in the creation. Unsurprisingly, “Patriots Day” is the same type of idea.
The movie follows the Boston Marathon bombing from 2013, as well as its aftermath. Throughout the film, we learn about how the terrorists handled their situation as well as how the FBI and Boston police handled their’s. It was one of those types of movies that everyone knows the story but maybe not the journey. The real question however is, was this film done effectively?
The answer to that; somewhat. There were some aspects that positively influenced the storytelling, while there were other times where the movie felt like another documentary. The bombing incident was one of the more emotional scenes in cinema during 2016. In fact, the first forty-five minutes were actually quite compelling. I got a sense of who each character was, and how they would later be important to the overall outcome.
One of the major surprisers from this film was, the fact that the terrorists were actual characters. They were obviously heartless and morbid human beings, but at least you got a sense of what their mindset was. I felt like people never truly understood who these people were until this movie was released. I also enjoyed the fact that this didn’t feel like a cheap way to get Mark Wahlberg on the screen. Director Peter Berg did an excellent job in paying respect to the other heroes in this situation, most notably Danny Meng.
Despite the fantastic cast of Wahlberg, J.K. Simmons, and John Goodman, the last hour and twenty minutes were a bit underwhelming. After the bombing scene, the film felt like a documentary that I’ve already watched before. Berg sadly doesn’t shy away from those “proud to be a Bostonian” moments. He feels the need to add the David Ortiz speech at Fenway Park which was way too crowd-pleasing. Most of the movie was pretty genuine up until this moment.
Wahlberg also had this speech that made me sigh because of how many times I’ve seen something like that happen in cinema. Low key, it seemed like there was a lot they were trying to fit into that last hour and a half. Berg seemed to be going just fact by fact without really giving much time into developing the characters even more. The cinematic experience quickly turned into a documentary on National Geographic.
Nonetheless, I’m glad that Berg didn’t feel the need to focus too much on the deaths of innocent people. He was able to respect the families who did have their loved ones injured in this horrific incident. I just felt that it wasn’t enough to give me a surprising and refreshing movie experience. If Berg had done what he did in the first forty five minutes, then I would be thinking differently about this film.
