Gritty Real Life Drama!
- Patriots Day review by CS
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Whilst I found this quite an interesting film to watch, entertaining given the subject matter, it is not! This is in essence a slightly fictionalised account, based upon true events, of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, blending real life shots into the film at various points. the problem with American Films of this type is that they tend to glorify and revel in Americanisation and how wonderful it is to be a patriotic American, rather than concentrating on the facts, the reason why this happened and what actually happened! It can be hard sometimes for non-Americans to have the same empathy towards such tragic events when they happen in America, give the funding and support the USA notoriously have given terrorist groups such as the IRA over the years! As a result the American viewpoint on terrorism becomes slightly skewed, as it does so in this film. Giving credit where to is due though, this is quite a tough and gritty drama which is well played generally, although I would say the real heroes in this case were the general public rather than the Police themselves!
Hit and miss
- Patriots Day review by Alphaville
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This is a film overawed by its subject matter – the 2013 Boston marathon bombing – and its need to pay homage to the heroes and victims. It’s more of a commemoration to Boston and its inhabitants than it is a feature film. The first half is awful, totally unfocussed and filled with banal backstory snippets and newsreel-type depiction of the marathon and the bombing chaos itself. It plays like Act 1 of a 70s disaster movie.
The characters’ real-life counterparts appear on camera themselves at the end of the film and provide moving testimony, but their on-screen portrayal is sketchy and mawkish. They say ‘I love you’ over and over again to plinky-plonk piano muzak you just want to stop. The score, by the normally brilliant Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is terrible.
But just when you think the film will never be anything but a drawn-out news bulletin, it changes tack and gathers momentum. The second hour develops into the search for the bombers and, as a piece of thrilling cinema, it starts to grab the attention. Director Peter Berg is at his best when he’s able to focus on these more contained confrontations and milk them for tension and thrills, as he did in Lone Survivor.
There are some exciting incidents that almost save the film, but then it returns to the mawkishness with which it began. American critics like this film, as they did Berg’s similar Deepwater Horizon, but they’re judging the concept rather than what’s on-screen. Perhaps it’s best viewed in this light, as a well-intentioned commemoration of a tragic event, its heroes and victims and even the city of Boston itself.
