My interest in going to see Patriots Day was a mixed bag. I don’t have much of a taste for disaster films or their closely related. And I was, I admit, mildly put off by the idea of a “heartfelt tribute” or “inspiring story” as was said of Patriots Day. I like uplift as much as the next person, but I have a pretty deep aversion to treacle.
On the other hand Jan and I spent a fraction shy of fifteen years in Eastern New England, half of that in Newton, an inner ring suburb of Boston, the balance in Providence, Rhode Island while Jan worked that entire time at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, another inner ring suburb right next to Newton, and the scene of the denouement of the tragic story that drives Patriots Day.
So, while no doubt the country was largely focused on those events, we were actually swept up with them, and they directly affected what we did and where we went. So, I kind of felt I had to go see the movie. And, while I have some caveats, a couple quite serious, I really liked the movie.
The dramatic thread to drive the story is a fictional cop, Sgt Tommy Saunders played by Mark Wahlberg, a Zelig like character who manages to be at nearly every important moment in the ongoing story. I notice most reviews are critical of the character, and a couple of the acting. Mr Wahlberg, a favorite son of the city was meant to be a stand in for the city, and, frankly, I thought it worked. Again, a lot of people did not. Without a doubt the city of Boston is much at the heart of the story, and Wahlberg’s character was a distillation of that city.
For those unfamiliar with the outline of the events, on the 15th of April, in 2013, two bombs exploded near the conclusion of the storied Boston Marathon. The date for the Marathon is by custom set on the Massachusetts state holiday, Patriots’ Day, the annual remembrance of the battles of Lexington and Concord (which, actually occurred on April 19th, but, you know…) That connection, I felt, particularly given the title of the movie, hangs in the air throughout the movie.
The film is directed by Peter Berg, who along with Matt Cook and Joshua Zetumer also wrote the script. The score by Trent Reznor drove the oppressive sense of dread through much of the movie. The ensemble cast includes a couple of fictional characters like Saunder’s wife played by Michelle Monaghan, the majority are adaptations of the real people who were at the heart of the action. Rachel Brosnahan as Jessica Kensky, Christopher O’Shea as Patrick Downes, Dustin Tucker as Steve Woolfenden and Lucas Thor Kelley as Woolfenden’s son Leo stood in for the many victims of the horror.
Of the other real life people MIT policeman Sean Collier was played by Jack Picking and the Northeastern student Dun Meng whose real life heroics provided a critical turn in the events was played by Jimmy O Yang. Kevin Bacon played FBI agent in charge Richard DesLauriers, John Goodman as Commissioner Ed Davis, J.K. Simmons stole the show, or close to it, as Sergeant Jeffrey Pugllese, Michael Beach as Governor Deval Patrick, the list of those in charge goes on a fair ways.
The mastermind, as best one can say it of the brothers was Tamerlan Tsarnaev played by Them Melikidze, while his screw up younger brother Dzhokhar was played by Alex Wolff. Tamerlan’s wife Katherine Russell was played by Melissa Benoist. One of my objections to the movie was how there seems no doubt from the script, of at the very least her knowledge of what was going on and tacit support, while in real life what her part if any was is absolutely not known – she has not to date been charged with anything.
Something Jan noticed and which once observed, I felt was another problem with the film. While the cast was large and they obviously could not portray everything that happened, the heroics of the medical teams involved were to my viewing and Jan’s very much background. The reality that every single person who made it to a medical facility alive, lived, was not addressed. And that’s too bad. Some genuine heroics played out on many an operating table in Boston and environs that day and in the days that followed.
Sheila O’Malley writing for Roger Ebert dot com, observed, “Fred (“Mr.”) Rogers once said, ‘When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ The quote is thrown around a lot in times of catastrophe but that does not lessen its truth. If you’ve been through a terrorist attack, or a natural disaster, or any violent event, then you know that Mr. Rogers is right. Disaster strikes, and there are those who rush to the scene to help in any way they can.”
She is right. Absolutely. And continues,”‘Patriots Day’ is at its best when it focuses on the real-life people—first responders, overwhelmed emergency room doctors, local policemen and FBI agents, those manning the phones for citizen tips, the hacker-types analyzing mounds of video footage—who ran to the middle of the maelstrom and got busy helping, the living embodiment of ‘Boston Strong'” In my view it didn’t always succeed in this. But, it did enough to carry the film.
Chris Klimek writing the review of the movie for NPR notes “The movie’s one big action set piece, a shootout between police and the Tasarnaev brothers in a residential neighborhood in Watertown, just west of Boston, is appropriately frightening and disorienting.” And, for me, it was a bit too Hollywood. Big explosions. Cars flying into the air. No doubt it was a horrific moment and seared into the lives of all involved. I looked around for an actual account of the shootout and couldn’t find the details detailed enough to compare, but it rang false for me, in an otherwise serious attempt at portraying reality.
At Rotten Tomatoes seventy-nine percent of the one hundred and twenty six professional reviewers gave it a thumb’s up, solid if not spectacular. However, it is a crowd pleaser, a full ninety percent of the twelve thousand plus viewers who choose to record an opinion at Rotten Tomatoes liked it. The movie runs one hundred and thirty minutes.
There were a number of those minutes that could have veered into jingoism. And indeed there were moments of people not precisely going with the law in pursuit of the Tsarnaevs where there was applause from the audience. And frankly that haunts me about the movie more than anything. Still, in large part the movie stayed with the decency and heorics of ordinary people in an extraordinary and terrifying moment. The very people Mr Rogers has called us to watch out for.
And it is here that I have my most ambivalent feelings about the movie, and perhaps, precisely what it is meant to say. I have a conflicted relationship with cultural identities. As an American of the left I’m deeply aware of the problems we carry, the good and, very much the ill of it all. Our Republic is also something of an empire, and we live the lives we live in part through the exploitation of other cultures, and specifically their natural resources, and increasingly their cheap labor. Of course that all has come home to roost in many ways as work in manufacture has left us for those cheaper places.
There are other complexities of culture that I don’t feel so willing to relativize, our general liberal and humanistic stance in regard to women and GLBT folk, for instance. That people hate us for this is a fact on the ground. I am also aware of the mess that arises out of the Israeli/Palestinian quagmire and our part in it.
Near the heart of this is the problem of social identity and how that relates to nation states. In my circles there is a hesitation about identifying too closely with a country. And there definitely are problems, many profound in nationalism. The problem is that while the nation state itself is of relative recent manufacture, we are herd animals, we are social animals, and we naturally create boundaries between “us” and “them.” And those who want to label it all as “tribalism” and denounce it seem to miss the deep realities about what we are as creatures that the nation state represents.
We belong in groups. This ranges from rooting for sports teams, which in general is benign, but certainly isn’t always right up to nationalism, or, if you will, patriotism. There is much that is ill in this, evil actions that flow out of our separating identities. And, there is beauty, and, frankly, a naturalness to our being social animals that simple dismissal misses, and any social or political stance that ignores, minimizes, or simply demonizes, will have no positive results. At best ignored, or belittled, at worst, seen as a cancer on the body politic. But, in no way helpful.
This movie tries to walk through that mess, celebrating the Mr Rogers moments. And, I think without being a thinking movie, a reflective movie, it succeeds in pointing to some of the decency and goodness of our communities, made substantial when David Ortiz, “Big Papi,” perhaps Boston’s most beloved immigrant speaks out of these events of “our fucking city.”
We live in dangerous times. We are responsible for some of it.
And, with all its flaws, I think Patriots Day mostly shows that.
And all along the way it focuses on the common decency and heroism of ordinary people. You know, humans at our best. And taken together, yes, Boston is our fucking city. Who we are. And, what we can be. All of it.
And for that I’m glad I saw this movie.
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