DUELING REVIEWS!
We’re testing a new occasional format here at The Parsing Haus, the Doubleheader — pitting two fearless reviewers against one other in a steel cage showdown of bon mots and savvy! (Or not. Sometimes, we might even agree.) Here’s the deal: CLGJr and Haus both saw the upcoming film Patriots Day, both penned reviews, and only once they’d finished did each see the other’s. Behold, the result. Suffice to say we didn’t see eye to eye this time.
You can read both, starting with CLGJr’s Slam below, or jump straight to Haus’s Praise and circle back.
Patriots Day [Review by CLGJr]
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts officially designates the third Monday of every April as Patriots’ Day. (For some reason, its northern neighbors in Maine prefer the singular possessive.) Bostonians host their storied marathon on that same day each spring, as they have for almost 120 years. The morning of April 13, 2013—not unlike the early hours of September 11, 2001—was by all accounts unremarkable. And then tragedy struck. Bombs placed at two sites along the finish line detonated, killing three and horrifically injuring hundreds more. “Patriots Day” recounts those events and the weeklong investigation without the nuance, focus, and skill warranted. It’s bluntly a mess of a movie, a depressing and borderline exploitative endeavor.
The narrative, known to any sentient person, first crisscrosses the pre-Marathon preparations of an unwieldy stable of characters.
We then witness the bombing in raw, haunting detail. A massive hunt for the terrorists ensues. One dies; the other is apprehended. A mournful nation celebrates. The script tells this story mostly through the composite creation of Sgt. Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg, who else?) and his equally fictional wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan); married couple Patrick Downes (Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica Kensky (Rachel Brosnahan of “House of Cards” fame), spectators who are gravely injured in the blast; veteran Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese (a game J.K. Simmons), who engages the terrorists in a suburban shootout; and the nerdy but courageous Dun Meng (Jimmy O. Yang), who is taken hostage during their attempted escape for New York.
Sustaining one’s attention across these mostly disjointed storylines, among several others, is a marathon itself. The crowded field and their superficial prologues dilute any meaningful connection to the very real, harrowing experiences that follow. Empathy should cascade over the audience, yet there’s no reason to care.
How did Peter Berg let this happen? In what could have been an indispensable double billing of contemporary American disasters, “Patriots Day” saw limited release only three months after his vastly superior “Deepwater Horizon.” Where that picture intelligently indicted corporate misfeasance and celebrated selfless bravery, this one is thematically rudderless and prone to drastic oversimplification. A labyrinthine FBI command center emerges, to the casual eye, in a matter of minutes. Saunders connects all the dots that identify the suspects as if Raymond Babbitt with a badge. Both the federal investigation and the weighty decisions facing state and local officials receive the “Law & Order” procedural treatment. I imagine that Commissioner Ed Davis assumed vital responsibility for the Boston P.D. effort. John Goodman—sporting caterpillars where eyebrows normally appear—nevertheless portrays him as a collection of grunts and gripes. Berg rarely pauses to appreciate moments of great consequence with the dexterity on ample display in “Deepwater.” The effect is equally maddening and, frankly, boring.
The worst offense is the dramatization of the Tsarnaev brothers, the terrorists responsible for the carnage. Arguably, this movie demanded some interpretation of how their murderous rampage unfolded. Any conversations, any personal elements of course had to be speculative. Berg and his screenwriting team puzzlingly render them as bumbling thriller villains. To what end? To humanize them? To underscore the banality of evil? Yes, the brothers were human beings, driven by odious, nihilistic beliefs. The depiction offered, though, barely exceeds the cartoonish. The film cannot justify uninterrupted stretches of bickering, scowling, and verbal nonsense, mostly courtesy of Dzhokhar (Alex Wolff). These performances are as unwatchable as the Tsarnaevs themselves were monstrous.
Likewise, several of our protagonists spew banal action flick one-liners after some of the most profound scenes. Audiences will laugh incongruously at one such Simmons quip immediately after the gorgeously shot Watertown skirmish. Yang tells Wahlberg to catch his abductors in the corniest way possible. Never have my face and palm actually met as often in a theater. Not only are these choices artistically embarrassing, they are downright distasteful.
“Patriots Day” so desperately wants a seat at the Great Boston Movie table. Everything is in its right place, in large part because the saga played out across the metro area from downtown to Cambridge to Watertown. Michael Mann-esque flyovers of the Zakim Bridge and financial district towers should dot the screen but instead dominate it. Dunkin’ makes an early, superfluous appearance. The local accent is defiled. Even Big Papi appears in the coda. And still a different 2016 release, set mostly thirty miles north, resonates much more as a Boston film. The only redeeming elements are the transcendent finish line and Watertown scenes as well as pre-credits interviews with the actual men and women who survived that day. Berg otherwise wastes the chance to tell any number of genuine stories about everyday heroism and law enforcement valor. In the process, he wastes our time.
CLGJr Verdict: A deeply disappointing release that disserves its subject matter and the viewing public. The potential for a historically rich, engaging film about the Boston Marathon bombing was squandered for an overlong, desultory experience. Do yourself a favor and see “Deepwater Horizon” a second time instead.
Patriots Day [Review by Haus]
Close on the heels of Deepwater Horizon comes Patriots Day, another Mark Wahlberg / Peter Berg (WahlBerg?) picture documenting real-life calamity: First, a devastating oil rig fire, and now, the 2013 terrorist attack on the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
Dramatizing a highly publicized and particularly reviled bombing is a tough task: The filmmakers have got to be awfully careful squeezing into that parking spot, lest they clip their mirrors on sensationalism, whitewash, or profiteering. It’s frankly surprising that a major Hollywood team took this on, and so soon.
And to respectfully dissent from our resident Boston exceptionalist, they were right to do it. This is a film you’ll want to see.
The narrative plays true to life, tracking the events immediately preceding the attack and extending several days after. The film weaves together stories (and snippets thereof) from victims, police officers, FBI agents, administrators, and the perpetrators themselves.
Mark Wahlberg’s BPD officer Tommy Saunders is the main transgression here: He’s a composite character drawn from several real-life cops. This film could, and should, have done without: It would have played better to skip the mosaic and give several actors the real-life roles rather than have Saunders magically show up at the scene of pretty much every major plot development. (And, since the fictional composite can’t steal the show from the real participants in any given scene, once there he tends merely to look on.) This gripe aside, Wahlberg does a good and honest job with the role–he’s a believable police officer, and he anchors the story for the screen. It just doesn’t need it.
The supporting players are solid as well: John Goodman as the police commissioner, Kevin Bacon as the FBI man in charge, JK Simmons as a Watertown police sergeant, Jake Picking as the ill-fated MIT police officer, and Jimmy O. Yang as Dun Meng.
Playing the terrorists is of course a particularly thankless task. Themo Melikidze portrays Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Melissa Benoist (Supergirl!) is his wife, and Alex Wolff his younger brother Dzhokar. Patriots Day succeeds at the cakewalk task of vilifying them, and does so particularly effectively in the case of Dzhokar: Painting him as an entitled, whiny, and self-involved lame-nuts douche.
Patriots Day doesn’t do too much with the attackers from an ideological standpoint, save to trot out 9/11 conspiracy theories and make the point in no uncertain terms that they were Muslim — but it does take a very strong stand with Tamerlan’s wife, portraying her as prevaricating, in on it, and cold to the bone. I wouldn’t much want to be Katherine Russell when this film comes out.
In a short but riveting scene, a CIA interrogator (played by Khandi Alexander) quickly sinks her hooks into Russell. Although not a whole lot actually happens here, I found it utterly mesmerizing — an awe-inspiring hat-tip to the formidable and frightening cards in the U.S. intelligence deck — and at the same time very deeply satisfying, in much the same way as when the cops show up with automatic weapons to rain justice on the bombers. But although it caters to the viewing mob’s need for justice, the film at the same time at least plays lip service to the other side: That Miranda warnings and due process are necessary, that ordinary folks have rights, and that we can’t just go declaring martial law and strip searching civilians every time a killer is loose in the city. But again, by making even staunch Fourth Amendment fanboys pop at least a partial bone-on for the Bad Side here, I must say that as social commentary Patriots Day packs more nuance than I expected from the one-time head of the Funky Bunch. Bully for him.
If you’re skittish about revisiting this subject matter, rest assured that Berg largely avoids the temptation to glory in gore. (Are you listening, Mel Gibson?) Yes, there are ten tough minutes of aftermath footage with a few fleeting close ups of chaos and raw flesh, but you’ll see nothing that the national news didn’t already broadcast on loop for a couple weeks in 2013.
It’s gratifying that the true voyeurism in Patriots Day comes not in wanton wound-spotting but in behind the scenes glimpses — of the FBI’s ad hoc command center, of the hypothesized home life of the attackers, of the carjacking (a portion of the story I knew little about), and of the surprisingly brutal impromptu gun-battle on the streets of sleepy Watertown.
I wasn’t as swayed by the film’s central thesis — thankfully confined to a pop-up deep-bro monologue by composite Saunders — that love always wins and is the best weapon against terrorism. It comes off a bit trite, but then I didn’t spend months interviewing victims and law enforcement officials to make this movie. If Love Wins is the honest result of all that careful research, then maybe there’s some truth to it, after all.
Haus Verdict: Patriots’ Day is a fast-paced docu-level retelling of the Boston Marathon bombing that manages to be exciting, respectful, accurate, and properly jingoistic. See it.
Patriots Day opens everywhere Friday January 13.
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