Review of Patriots Day (2016) by Michael M — 31 Mar 2017

This film is a sloppy, rush job telling of the Boston Marathon bombings. Having first hand knowledge of a lot of how the actual bombings response and later the hunt for the Tsarnaev brothers occurred , Wahlberg got much of it wrong.

Who did what, how decisions were made and how the investigation was carried out was not how it happened. The three or four main characters in the film do it ALL instead of the large group of people that actually were involved in what was a very complex operation.

Many of the real heroes such as the BAA volunteers and EMTS who ran towards the bomb sites as the crowds ran away, were completely left out of the story. Also, watching the movie you are completely unaware of the sheer number of critically wounded people at the finish line that day.

Both the fictional and the real life characters were poorly developed. It seems like a rush job to do a very superficial telling of a complex highly charged and traumatic event. If Wahlberg really wanted to get it right, as he claims, he blew it.