Does Peter Berg only do cheesey films? I'm fine with a bit of sentimentality, but this guy goes wayyyyy overboard.
Not that I'm a robot completely immune to the emotions Patriots Day tries to invoke in me, but there should be a limit really.
It's a retelling of the events of the boston marathon bombing in 2013, and the consequent manhunt to find the culprits. Marky Wahlberg (Peter Berg also likes him apparently) plays Tommy Saunders, an amalgamation of several real police officers, who plays a major role in finding and taking them down. It's also interspersed with scenes of average boston people doing stuff revolving their lives and the effects of the bombing, and how its all interconnected including the perspectives of the terrorists before and after the attack.
Pretty simple compelling plot overall, cos I'm not made of stone, and some stuff works a lot better than others. Seeing people unite under harsh circumstances, some parts of the investigation, a firefight in a civilian street, that works. And like I said, the emotions do work mostly, it just lays it on so goddamn thick. Wahlberg's character in paticular seems to be created specifically for the purposes of eliciting emotion from the audience, specially a scene where he gives a monologue about the only way to defeat terrorism is by loving each other, and other kinds of remarks that feel like they'd work best on a terrible facebook meme, the kind that get shared by those relatives you never speak to.
It ends up feeling treacly (is that a word?), frankly. But not bad, not uncompelling, and it worked in making me have feels. Kind of maybe reccomended.
