In his third film with director Pete Berg, Mark Wahlberg stars in the dramatisation of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. As he is wont to do (case in point Deepwater Horizon, which also stars Wahlberg), Berg sticks to the facts in Patriot’s Day . And although his leading man’s character has been fictionalised, all the other characters are based on real people who worked tirelessly to capture the bombers.
Patriot’s Day opens a few hours before the marathon showing us glimpses into the lives of the people who would eventually be affected by the attack. The film then spans the five days (April 15 to April 19), commencing with the day of the bombing going up to when the officials finally found the second perpetrator hiding in a boat. Essentially, the film is a love letter to the city of Boston, exalting the citizens and the officials’ tireless work to capture the terrorists. For instance, in one scene, officials realise they’ve received thousands of responses just minutes after addressing the public, and another shows a citizen risking his life in the midst of gunfire to offer an officer his sledgehammer as a weapon.
It’s noteworthy that Berg hasn’t intentionally once tried to emotionally manipulate his audience save for his addition of little story arcs to the real-life characters. Despite that, the film does manage to embed itself firmly in the viewers’ minds. The director does that first with his impactful depiction of the attack’s aftermath. There’s blood spilled in the streets, body parts strewn about and people running helter-skelter in panic but still helping each other out. Berg translates, as much as you can in a film, the chaos, mayhem and fear that went down after the bombing.
Although terrorism films are prone to play up the anti-Muslim rhetoric often exacerbating the hatred towards the religion, in this case, there’s an unequivocal hero with little attention paid to the villains.
It’s Boston’s resilience that triumphs; love wins over hate eclipsing the evil represented by the bombers. And Berg’s depiction of the terrorists is actually refreshing; it’s a portrayal that doesn’t patronise the audience by humanising them or offering an explanation of their actions.
A buoyant feeling
Each time Berg uses real images and actual news footage from April 2013 — including cameos from the people the characters are based on — it only validates the audience’s reaction to the city’s people and its law enforcement agencies. And you’ll end up leaving Patriot’s Day feeling buoyant after seeing how the city of Boston reacted to the bombings.
