Dramatic
Exceptionally Acted and Directed throughout
True Story
Depicting the Marathon Bombing from all parties involved
Ensemble
Mark Wahlberg, J.K. Simmons, Bacon and Goodman all work together to elevate their performances
Crowd Pleaser
A+ on cinemascore, a rare and convented mark
Patriots Day is the rare film that depicts a recent national tragedy with deft filmmaking, skilled direction and well rounded performances; this is a movie that turns the narrative of a terrorist attack into a story of heroism in the every day citizen. While by no means a happy movie, I smiled frequently in Patriots Day, surprised and excited to see a movie thats both a nationalistic propaganda piece intent on cashing in on modern patriotism (because that's exactly what this is) and an inspirational narrative of grief and cooperation in spite of that grief.
Peter Berg's retelling of the Boston Marathon Bombing follows all the threads of tragic event you heard about on the news and some more you may have forgotten about. Wahlberg plays a cop with the misfortune of being at the finish line as the bomb goes off, Simmons plays the Watertown Police Cheif, others fill in the role as the student who was a hostage and the couple who lost their limbs. We see all angles of the investigation that proceeded in the days to follow including behind the scenes with the FBI and on the streets with the Boston press. Even the two bombers, the Tsnaraev borthers are handled with a medium of respect, depicting them as clearly radicalized grounded by desperation and fear. It's the type of evil you can root against but you can't classify as black or white. I was floored with the amount of respect this material was approached with and delighted by all the angles it juggled seamlessly.
Patriots Day surprised me in all the best ways. I walked in expecting a competent retelling of the events we know with an unhealthy dose of "Go America Go" storytelling, but I was moved emotionally instead. It was intense when it needed to be, dramatic in others, and even heartwarming in small doses. I would absolutely recomend Patriots Day to anybody who is interested, this is the best I've seen nationalist storytelling in a long time. Well done Berg, well done.
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