Patri­ots Day

Peter Berg’s idea of patri­o­tism finds its clear­est, most con­vinc­ing artic­u­la­tion in Patri­ots Day, a new film which recre­ates the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing and the man­hunt that fol­lowed. The film shows the inci­dent from all sides, inter­twin­ing the sto­ries of vic­tims, police and the bombers them­selves with remark­able nar­ra­tive clar­i­ty and a low-key style.

But despite its mat­ter-of-fact approach towards sense­less ter­ror, there emerges not a sense of defeat but rather the over­whelm­ing feel­ing of sol­i­dar­i­ty amongst Bosto­ni­ans. More inter­est­ing­ly, this ver­sion of patri­o­tism is also realised in the film’s form. Far from being an insen­si­tive abuse of real tragedy for the pur­pose of enter­tain­ment, Patri­ots Day’s large scale re-enact­ment does some jus­tice to the pain of Boston cit­i­zens and to the strength of their community.

Emo­tions do not emanate from an arti­fi­cial­ly melo­dra­mat­ic treat­ment, rather Berg’s real­ist style restores to the events their orig­i­nal inten­si­ty. Be it the emo­tion of the attack or the unde­ni­able thrill of the man­hunt, the film works both as thriller
and dra­ma.

This real­is­tic treat­ment makes Patri­ots Day an incred­i­bly effec­tive anti­dote to the numb­ing indif­fer­ence encour­aged by pure­ly fac­tu­al, emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant news reports. Almost inad­ver­tent­ly, the film reveals this pes­simistic atti­tude as a way to exempt one­self of respon­si­bil­i­ty towards oth­ers. The film’s human­i­ty is all the more mov­ing in a year defined by divi­sion. Mak­ing a con­vinc­ing case for the human­is­tic poten­tial of fic­tion­al re-stag­ing, Berg’s film throws into ques­tion the idea that dra­mat­ic recon­sti­tu­tions are inevitably insensitive.

At once a ter­rif­ic thriller and a social­ly con­sci­en­tious plea for sol­i­dar­i­ty, Patri­ots Day rein­vig­o­rates the action film with a sense of social purpose.