Patriots Day

Directed By: Peter BergWritten By: Peter Berg, Matt Cook, Joshua Zetumer (based on the book Boston Strong by Casey Sherman and David WedgeStarring: Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Kevin Bacon, J.K Simmonds

Over the last three years Peter Berg has proven himself to be something of a master at parlaying true tragedies into thrilling, cinematic documents of American spirit and fortitude. Patriots Day completes the director’s unofficial Mark-Wahlberg-in-a-real-life-crisis trilogy; in 2013 Berg tackled the botched SEAL team 10 mission in Afghanistan that resulted in the loss of three American lives (Lone Survivor); in 2016 the director brought to screen America’s largest ever ecological disaster, an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that claimed 11 lives and injured 17 others (Deepwater Horizon). Now we have Patriots Day, the prickliest of Berg’s subjects due to the freshness of its wounds; a recounting of the crimes and capture of the two brothers who orchestrated the 2013 Boston bombings.

Grievances have been flagged at Berg’s honing in on such a recent tragedy for storytelling purposes, concerns that translating such recent grief into drama borders upon being crass. But Berg is much too much of a, ah-hum, patriot, to exploit such hardships. Rather, the writer/director’s passion is for capturing the visceral energy of the circumstances at hand whilst evoking the wonders of the human spirit in the undercurrent. Patriots Day is certainly no departure from these principles. In fact, Berg’s latest sees the director exercise perhaps too much patriotism, the film marred by its director’s seemingly desperate attempt to purport American exceptionalism. Peter Berg has never been a subtle filmmaker, but here he slips into the treacle and ham-fisted in his appraisals of the Boston community, to the point where one can’t take the notion as seriously as it deserves; the director, in spite of his good intentions, unsure of how to instil a positive morality into such a dark narrative.

It’s never been morality that defines Berg’s work however. It wasn’t ecology that laid at the heart of Deepwater Horizon, but Berg’s technically masterful recreation of the disaster; that aforementioned viscerality which has time and again positioned itself as the cornerstone of the director’s storytelling. In this respect too, Patriots Day offers no departure from previous work, unfurling as a pressing recreation of the events that fateful day, and the equally fateful days following, that is as absorbing as it is insightful.

Berg’s screenplay, cowritten by Matt Cooke and Joshua Zetumer, draws on a mini tapestry of characters to flesh out the manhunt of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze respectively). On the law enforcement side of proceedings we’re aligned with Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), neighbouring Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K Simmons), special FBI agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon), and, centrally, Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg), a fictitious character composed non-fictional parts, an amalgamation of several officers who took to the streets in the wake of the bombings. Tommy is insubordinate and wounded, when we first meet him his leg is in a brace and he is consigned to working routine house calls as punishment for a previous indiscretion, but by equal measure he is a man of passion, and Mark Wahlberg is strong in the central performance, bringing as much heft to Tommy’s clunky, optimistic monologues as one may. On the civilian side we meet a well to do married couple, a young Chinese immigrant, and a MIT campus officer, each tragically woven into the narrative, Berg, as ever, restrained and diligent in laying the groundwork for his characters.

The imperative moments of the action are tasteful whilst pulsing with stirring drama and tension. The marathon bombings themselves, which happen in the first stanza of the film, are orchestrated by Berg as a tempered visual cacophony; frenzied and panicked; unflinching enough to be painful and restrained enough to avoid being exploitive.

The investigations and subsequent capture of the Tsarnaevs is depicted as a sprawling procedural, one that fizzes along with great urgency and clarity. To his credit, Berg doesn’t neglect the moral ambiguities that surround the event, Tommy and the rest of the force are confounded when they are told to sweep Miranda rights under the carpet in the event of detaining one of the brothers, and lurking in the consciousness of the FBI is the need to ensure the Muslim community are not demonised in the pursuit. Nor are the bombers themselves dismissed as faceless, to lend credence to his drama, Berg develops the brothers and their relationship with one another when many a filmmaker would have thought the point was moot.

These notions do quickly dissipate in the light of Berg’s white knuckle action set pieces, namely an extended shoot out in a small Boston neighbourhood (the sort of cinema where the director is truly in his element), but there is enough there to confirm that with more time, a truly evocative film can be made on the subject. As it stands, Peter Berg’s detailing of the Boston bombings is a relentlessly tense and well-meaning docudrama that stands comfortably with the director’s previous Mark Wahlberg collaborations.

Rating:

3/4