'PATRIOTS DAY' is another real life dramatic thriller Co-Written for the screen and Directed by Peter Berg who also brought us last years
'Deepwater Horizon' and
'Lone Survivor' in 2013 which both also starred, like this offering, his go to actor for playing the uniformed ordinary everyman caught up in extraordinary circumstances - Mark Wahlberg. Based on the book
'Boston Strong' by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge this tells the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. Costing US$45M to make the film has so far recovered US$38M since its US release at Christmas time. The film has garnered generally positive Reviews from critics and film goers alike.
The film opens up with Boston Police Department Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) busting down a door with his leg to get to a drug dealer inside a seedy downtown apartment. The bust goes according to plan, except that Saunders has hyper-extended his leg and now walks with a limp and a knee brace for the rest of the film. Immediately following the bust his superior officer, Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) arrives and orders that Saunders reports for Marathon Supervision duties the next day wearing his Police Uniform. He tries to argue back but is quickly brought down a peg by Davis reminding him of some earlier misdemeanour for which he is serving out time on dead beat duties, and tomorrow is his last day of servitude and then he has a clean slate again thereafter. He arrives back home in the early hours of the morning having had a few beers with the boys, wakes his wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan) who dismisses him, and settles onto the sofa with another beer - he has to be up for Marathon duty in less than five hours. The next day, April 15th 2013, with his Police Uniform neatly pressed and high viz jacket on, the pair kiss and bid their farewells.
The next day cuts to an apartment where radical Islam brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff) are making final preparations for a bomb attack on the Boston Marathon. Using home made devises loaded with all manner of harm inflicting shrapnel, they load the improvised explosive devices into two back-packs and make off for their destination. We trace their journey to the proximity of the finish line, negotiating their way through the crowds of onlookers and revellers out enjoying the Patriots Day public holiday. They weave in and out of spectators young and old, security personnel, Police, and other officials and then lay their back packs at their feet, turn around and depart from whence they came. No one suspects a thing. Pacing up and down the street meanwhile is Tommy Saunders taking it all in and sharing a joke with his on-duty fellow Police Officers. Then boom, as an explosion rips through the crowd just a block away quickly followed by another with smoke billowing out from the side of the street close to the finish line.
With widespread panic all around, Saunders and his fellow Officers are close at hand to issue orders, call in all necessary emergency support and provide assistance to the injured. It's a scene of carnage as the low positioned bombs radiated out their deadly shrapnel on most victims from the waist down. There are badly lacerated legs, ankles and feet, and severed lower limbs lying on the blood soaked pavement - it's a picture of death and destruction. We follow ambulance crews and paramedics attending to the injured and needy and then move to several hospitals where emergency surgery is being performed to amputate legs - on young husband and wife Patrick Downes (Christopher O'Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan) separated after the blast and taken unconscious to separate hospitals.
Quickly afterwards various law enforcement authorities began to gather at the scene while the emergency services go about their business. With Saunders giving orders to his fellow Police Officers on the ground, so arrives Commissioner Ed Davis, with FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) who survey the fall out and determine if this was a terrorist attack. Upon initial inspection DesLauriers is uncertain, but his mind is soon made up when he picks up a cluster of small blood soaked ball bearings. At this point DesLauriers assumes command and is in charge of operations. For now though he places a widespread embargo on any communication with the press or the media about a possible terrorist attack pending investigations and to avoid the news frenzy associated with acts of terror, especially on American soil.
Within no time a Command Centre is established in an abandoned warehouse where all manner of technological hardware, state of the art software, a reconstruction of the street scape and blast zone, and a whole army of analysts, surveillance experts and officials are mobilised to track down whoever did this. They begin by tapping into every camera lining the streets and those inside shops, cafes, bars and restaurants; using all the abandoned mobile phones from the scene and scanning text messages, photos and videos; and talking to witnesses at the scene, including those hospitalised. Saunders goes home to his wife, emotionally distraught at the sights he has witnessed over the preceding fourteen hours or so. In no time however, he receives a call to come into the Command Centre. There Saunders knowledge of the city and camera locations is put to the test as a person of interest is identified from the footage of the blast zone immediately before the explosions. Tracking the suspects possible whereabouts they trace back his journey in an attempt to get a clear photograph of the individual and any accomplice. It's not long before they do!
With clear photos of the two suspected bombers DesLauriers remains reluctant to go to the press without further hard evidence, but is hand is forced when Fox News announces that they have leaked photos of the suspects that they are going to release on their news channels soon. With photos of the perpetrators out there on all the news channels, the authorities hope that the people of Boston will come forward with information leading to a prompt capture . . . but it doesn't happen.
Meanwhile, the Tsarnaev brothers attempt to lay low while preparing for their next attack - in New York, but they have to get there first. They load up a car with their makeshift explosive devices in two boxes, and head out late at night. They need another weapon with which to protect themselves and so happen upon young Police Officer Sean Collier (Jake Picking) who is on night watch at a University Campus. They ambush him at gun point in his parked patrol car and shoot him twice in the face and attempt to steal his Police issue weapon, but Collier fights back from his drivers seat but is eventually overpowered with several more rounds shot into him at point blank range.
On the outskirts of the Campus, texting while parked in his new Mercedes SUV, Chinese student Dung Meng (Jimmy O. Yang) is car jacked by the two brothers and held captive at gun point. It is now 18th April, late at night, and the brothers brag to their captive that it was they who committed the Boston Marathon bombing and intend to do so again in New York. Meng is fearful for his life at the hands of the two bombers who now have him captive in his own car en route to New York. At a petrol station where the brothers stop to refill for fuel and food, Meng spies his chance to make a bolt for it and does so across the street into a convenience store and immediately calls the Police crouched behind the cashiers desk.
Saunders arrives at the scene and meets with Meng who, in his panicked pigeon English, reveals what the bombers said to him, and the number of his cars GPS tracking device so that they can follow the Mercedes. In Watertown the Mercedes is tracked down to a side street and a passing Police patrol car recognises the vehicle from the alert put out and goes in pursuit. The Mercedes is parked up in a quiet side street, that is about to turn very bloody and very noisy as an all out gun battle ensues between the two armed brothers and the gathering Police force including Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K.Simmons). The brothers also use their stash of homemade bombs and in the ensuing firefight several Police Officers are injured, vehicles trashed, but Tamerlan is shot by Pugliese and then ran over by his brother who makes his getaway in the Mercedes. Tamerlan dies on the operating table a short time afterwards in the hospital from his wounds.
The next day the decision is made to lock down the city completely with a house to house search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Saunders is back on the beat aiding the house to house investigations with the full force of the Police, and the military, as marshall law is declared temporarily and for the safety of Boston's citizens. A local man discovers someone hiding under the protective sheet covering his motor cruiser boat, and blood stains at the entry point at the boats rear. He calls the authorities, who converge on the property with Saunders and a colleague being the first to arrive at the scene. It's not long before the might of Uncle Sam reins down on the occupant of the boat who is indeed Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He is promptly arrested after a brief stand-off, and the closing credits reveal that he is sentenced to death by lethal injection and is still awaiting an appeal in federal prison.
I enjoyed
'Patriots Day' and felt it was respectful to those that died and were injured in the attack, and the authorities, first responders, survivors and investigators who all played a part in the concerted effort to bring the Tsarnaev brothers to justice as quickly as they did. The film has clearly been meticulously researched and is professionally played out without over dramatising the events or glamourising the subsequent manhunt. This is a procedural Police investigative story that holds true to the timeline, and is told from several different perspectives splicing actual footage from the event into the film that adds authenticity to the suspense and the drama of one of the most sophisticated and celebrated manhunts in history that helped reunite the people of Boston.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
With 'By Any Means' Director Bratton has delivered us a B-grade mash-up of 1988's 'Mississippi Burning' and 2018's 'Green Book' - both Academy Award nominated and winning films in their own right, unlike this film I would bet. That said, the film does shine a light on a period of American history not so long ago that it sill remains within living memory and deserves to be (re)told because it remains as relevant today as it did back then, and if you're a Gen Z'er or a Millennial then this is perhaps an important lesson you should take note of. Mark Wahlberg with his prosthetic nose, his bulging gut and his constant chewing on a toothpick portrays the Colombo crime family hitman and enforcer in what is probably his most violent and hateful role yet and does so with a malevolent conviction, while Yahya Abdul-Mateen has crafted a complex and driven character who yearns to do the right thing but is swayed by the bigotry he experiences in his everyday life. The film is serviceable enough, but it feels like a good cop bad cop buddy cop movie the likes of which we have seen in 'Lethal Weapon' and '48 Hours' et al, is familiar and when the ending comes it feels undercooked and just a bit of an anticlimax. 
