Patriots Day (2016)

Strong message, horrifying results; it definitely does what it tries to do.

Brilliant film, informed me so well about the true events. It was both interesting and moving.

For a film where the actors were obviously carefully selected for their resemblance to their real-life counterparts, (as is made clear by the introduction of the real participants near the end of the film), to pivot the action around an entirely fictitious character (Mark Wahlberg's ubiquitous police officer], surely had to be a mistake. I say ubiquitous because Wahlberg always seems to be Johnny-on-the-spot whenever anything significant happens in the action. There he is close by when the bombs go off, he's there just after the young Chinese boy is kidnapped and carjacked by the two bombers, he's also there at their shoot out with the cops and again when the authorities finally catch up with the fugitive younger brother. Once you know this (it becomes obvious when there's no real life equivalent introduced for him at the end), you realise you've been manipulated as a viewer and it just weakens the whole premise of the film. Surely there were enough brave citizens and emergency services in Boston on the day of the incident without the need for this imaginary person. Otherwise I couldn't say I was entirely gripped as I think I should have been by the depiction of proceedings as they were presented. Of course the story has to follow the real life sequence of events which I don't doubt it did, I just didn't think it was done in a very exciting or gripping way.Fine to celebrate the everyday heroism of ordinary average people when confronted by the unexpected, criminal and dangerous, but stretching it to a two hour movie didn't come off here.

It was hard to look away from the screen throughout the entire runtime. I went in thinking it would be another jazzed up Hollywood recount of a tragedy with countless factual inaccuracies, but I was so wrong. Watched in class and half the students around me were crying by the end and I can't stop thinking about it. Putting real archival footage in this was an excellent decision made by Berg, and made it feel that much more real.My main complaint was that the cast was really star-studded and gave away who lives and dies in the movie relatively quickly. John Goodman isn't signing onto a role just to be killed halfway through. I would have like lesser known or newcomer actors to play the leads, would've just felt less familiar that what it was when using well known actors.