Patriots Day (15)

four stars

Dir: Peter Berg

With: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman

Runtime: 133 minutes

BETWEEN Deepwater Horizon and the Afghanistan-set Lone Survivor, Peter Berg has shown he can rescue a sense of triumph from the grimmest of tragedies. It makes him the ideal writer-director for Patriots Day, the true story of the Boston Marathon bombing in which three people died and hundreds were injured.

This is a picture that certainly wears its stars and stripes-wrapped heart on its sleeve. But in telling the story as one of a community pulling together in the face of hatred and violence, Berg delivers a more nuanced take on terrorism and its impact than one might have expected from the helmer of the gung-ho Battleship.

Narratively, he opts for nothing fancy, simply setting out the events as they unfolded over the course of an extraordinary, terrifying few days. Wisely, he homes in on personal stories rather than trying to take some grand overall view. While that approach harks bark to the disaster movies of old, he is bang up to date in the way he incorporates modern tech, such as CCTV, into the telling of the tale.

Patriots Day opens the night before the bombing with Tommy Saunders, a Boston detective played by Mark Wahlberg. Saunders, we soon learn, is a detective who has been a cheeky boy somewhere along the line, hence his having to get back in uniform, his “clown suit” he calls it, and do his duty as a mere patrolman at the finish line of the marathon. If there was an Oscar for lacerating sarcasm with a side of attitude then Wahlberg would lift it every year, and he is on top form here bantering with fellow officers and his commissioner boss (John Goodman).

Besides the other characters, including a young married couple and a campus guard at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we drop in on the home of the bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers. “I’ve been think a lot about Martin Luther King,” says the younger one, having a case of last minute nerves. “Martin Luther King was not a Muslim,” says the older brother.

So dawns the day. Berg has a difficult path to tread between showing the horror of what happens when murderers pack pressure cookers with explosives, nails and ball bearings and set them down at ground level where they hit small people and limbs hardest, and respecting the dignity of the victims. He manages to do so, once again finding all he needs in the events of the day - the first bomb followed quickly by the second, the initial confusion as to what had happened, people rushing to help, the mass evacuation to the hospitals.

Then Berg shifts up another gear, keeping up a pace that is now blistering. The suits arrive on the scene, the FBI, the governor, and a tech-packed headquarters is set up. If there was any chaos at this point, Berg does not show it. Agencies may bicker and compete about who is in charge and what to do, but the focus is on catching the suspects. With the pressure on to find the bombers before they strike again, the investigation plays out at break-neck pace.

There is far more detail about the chase and capture than there was at the time. The action is handled superbly, with Berg turning his attention in the quieter moments to the ordinary folk of Boston and the difference they made. Heroes emerge from this carnage, and not all of them are the usual suspects.

In addition to Goodman, gloriously grumpy as ever, and Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon is on crisp form as an FBI chief, while Michelle Monaghan delivers a small but perfectly executed turn as Wahlberg’s wife.

After the tension, fear and sorrow, Berg brings his tale to a conclusion in a way that might have you squirming, or could give you cause to cheer, depending on which part of the cynicism-optimism spectrum you call home. I won’t say more lest it be a spoiler, but let us just say, to borrow a phrase, that love is seen to trump hate.