Patriots Day

These cops have no idea what’s coming.

(2016) True Life Drama (CBS) Mark Wahlberg, John Goodman, Michele Monaghan, Kevin Bacon, J.K. Simmons, Christopher O’Shea, Rachel Brosnahan, Jake Picking, Lana Condor, Jimmy O. Yang, Melissa Benoist, Alex Wolff, Themo Melikidze, Martine Asaf, Michael Beach, Khandi Alexander, Cliff Moylan, Claudia Castriotta, James Colby, Billy Smith, Paige MacLean. Directed by Peter Berg

 

In many ways, our worth is determined by how our resolve is tested. It is at our worst moments when the best in us is drawn out. When the city of Boston was faced with an attack on their very identity, they showed the world more than extraordinary strength; they were Boston strong.

Tommy Saunders (Wahlberg) is not having a good day. He’s a gifted police officer who also has a gift for opening his mouth at the wrong moment. He has one more punishment duty to deal with – working as a uniformed officer at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. That also means putting on the yellow reflective vest which he thinks makes him look silly. His wife Carol (Monaghan) thinks it looks cute. To top it all off, Tommy’s knee is aching after kicking in a drug dealer’s door the night before and he forgets his brace at home; he asks Carol to bring it down to the finish line for him.

But Tommy’s day is about to get worse. Two Chechnyan brothers, Douchebag #1 (Melikidze) and Douchebag #2 (Wolff) have plans of their own. They plant two homemade bombs among the throngs watching the race at the finish line. After they stroll away, lost in the crowd, the bombs detonate, killing three people (including a child) and wounding scores. All is mayhem at the finish line.

Tommy takes charge, getting ambulances routed in and telling race officials to keep runners away. Medical personnel – some of them ex-military who knew what to do with wounds of this nature – respond immediately. Tommy’s boss, Commissioner Ed Davis (Goodman) takes charge as the FBI, in the person of Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Bacon) who takes immediate charge once he recognizes this was an act of terrorism.

But finding the bombers is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even with all the cameras trained on the event, not many were pointed at the crowd. With Tommy’s help knowing the area as well as he does, the authorities begin to close in on the perpetrators of this vile act but it will take the largest manhunt in U.S. history to catch these guys.

I was really glad I saw the documentary on the Marathon bombing (see below) the night before I saw this movie, mainly because I was able to see how close to the actual events the movie came. While the documentary focused on the victims and their recovery, this movie has more focus on the manhunt and those participating in it.

One of those participating in it is Saunders and while Wahlberg does a great job of developing his character, one of the big problems is that Saunders is wholly fictional. We soon realize that because he appears at nearly every major plot point in the film which after awhile takes me as a viewer out of the realism of the movie because other than that the movie is extremely realistic which is an impressive accomplishment for a Hollywood film.

The recreation of the bombing itself is impressive; Berg masterfully works in actual camera footage of the blast along with staged re-creations of it. Berg repeats this at various portions of the film. The Patriots Day bombing was one of the most documented incidents in history and there is a lot of footage available, some of it wildly seen, some of it not so much. Still, we get a good glimpse of the various stages of the manhunt, from the bombing itself to the capture of Douchebag #1 and Douchebag #2.

If you’re wondering why I don’t use the names of the two bombers, it’s because I don’t want history to remember them. If I could, I’d expunge their names from every document, from every post – from everywhere. People like this should be erased from history. They don’t deserve to be remembered.

On the other hand, the good people of Boston – the survivors of the bombing, the law enforcement personnel who chased and caught those miserable scumbags, the medics and surgeons who worked tirelessly on healing the wounded, even those who came out in support of Boston. There has been some grousing that this was made too soon after the bombing – only three years had passed when this was released. I probably am not someone who can judge this properly; I would leave that to the citizens of Boston, particularly those affected by the tragedy. However, this is certainly a movie that honors and respects the victims and those who fought to bring the douchebags to justice so all in all, I don’t think anyone can complain overly much about that.

REASONS TO GO: The film is surprisingly accurate. Strong performances throughout the cast buoy the film.
REASONS TO STAY: There is a loss of credibility by having Wahlberg play a fictional character.
FAMILY VALUES: There is violence and graphic images of injuries, some drug use and profanity throughout.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the third collaboration between Berg and Wahlberg that was based on a true story; the other two are Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/27/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 81% positive reviews. Metacritic: 69/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing
FINAL RATING: 7/10
NEXT: Decanted: A Winemaker’s Journey

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Marathon: The Patriot’s Day Bombing

An act of cowardice.

(2016) Documentary (HBO) Jessica Kensky, Patrick Downes, Sydney Corcoran, Daniel Linsky, JP Norden, Paul Norden, Kevin Corcoran, Deval Patrick, Chief Eduard Deveau, Celeste Corcoran, John Tlumacki, David Filipov, Patricia Wen, Jim Allen, Sgt. John MacLellan, Eric Moskowitz, Cpl. Clark Cavalier, Kelly Castine, Herman Kensky, Daniel Abel, Kieran Ramsey, Sgt. Brandon Dodson, Katy Kensky. Directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg

 

Most of us remember well the bombing of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. It hasn’t been quite four years but few of us have forgotten the shock of a terrorist attack on a major city, the loss of life and limb and the intensive manhunt for the bombers that followed.

It was also one of the most documented events of our time; security cameras not only caught the explosions but also were instrumental in helping law enforcement catch the two despicable wastes of flesh whose names won’t be mentioned here; one of the two died in a police shoot-out, the other was captured and sentenced to death – hopefully by having a homemade bomb strapped to his ‘nads and then detonated.

My feelings about cowardly scum who set off bombs in crowds of innocent people aside, Stern and Sundberg have assembled a massive amount of footage and helped piece together the events of the bombing meticulously and clearly. They’ve also followed some of the survivors in their efforts to overcome the horrendous injuries that they sustained both physically and psychologically. They’ve talked to the police who pursued the bombers and the reporters from the Boston Globe who covered the attack and who often received horrible emails and tweets because of it (some people felt the Globe was exploiting the attacks and giving too much coverage to the bombers themselves). The only ones not interviewed that I wish would have been were first responders on the scene – paramedics, ambulance drivers and ordinary people whose actions saved lives that day.

The filmmakers follow mainly Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, a pair of newlyweds who were standing by one of the bombs when it went off. Both had run the Marathon at one time; that year they chose to watch. Each lost a leg and Kensky eventually lost both after a valiant effort on her part to keep it. Both were plagued by depression and PTSD and eventually got help from the Walter Reed Hospital which treats those wounded in war by IADs and such. That particular segment is one of the most inspiring in the entire film and was the one that brought the most goosebumps and misty eyes on my part.

It also follows the Corcoran family who had several injured by the bombs; the impact of their agony led to some difficulties among those who were uninjured, including alcohol abuse and withdrawal from life. Celeste Corcoran lost both legs in the blast; she had been cheering on a sister who was running in the race. Sydney Corcoran had her femoral artery severed; only a quick-thinking veteran who reached into her leg and squeezed the artery shut saved her life or else she would have bled out on the sidewalk. That moment was caught by John Tlumacki, a Globe photography who received a great deal of criticism for capturing the moment even though it became a defining one of the entire incident. Finally there were the Norden brothers, Paul and JP, both of whom were gravely injured and taken to separate hospitals, forcing their mom Liz to have to go back and forth to each hospital as the brothers underwent several surgeries apiece.

One of the things that you may want to keep in mind when choosing to view this is that the footage of the bombing itself is largely uncensored; there is a terrifying amount of blood and some who are sensitive to such things may end up being disturbed by the footage. You get a real sense of the carnage and the chaos at the scene but thankfully only that – I can’t imagine the smell of gunpowder and blood and the screams of pain and fear that had to be going on that day.

This is a compelling documentary which could easily have been about humanity’s darker side. Instead, the filmmakers chose to make it about the triumph of the human spirit over adversity and how a city stood up, joined hands and supported one another through a dark period. I’ve seen that first hand – not only in Boston but in my home town Orlando as well following the Pulse shootings.

It’s hard to capture all the details of an event as important as this in a single two hour movie but at the very least Stern and Sundberg have captured the essence of it and that is all you can ask of any documentary. It’s life-affirming and haunting and at times hard to watch but it is at the end of the day essential viewing.

REASONS TO GO: It’s very thorough in all aspects of the film both pre and post race. The stories are compelling and there are lots of good feels. The focus is on the survivors as it should be.
REASONS TO STAY: It would have been nice to get interviews from first responders on the scene.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some bloody images and descriptions of grisly injuries; there is also some mild profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The Boston Globe co-produced the documentary; their coverage of the event won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/26/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 88% positive reviews. Metacritic: 82/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Patriot’s Day
FINAL RATING: 8/10
NEXT: Patriot’s Day

The Family (2013)

Michelle Pfeiffer is en fuego!

(2013) Comedy (Relativity) Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron, John D’Leo, Dominick Lombardozzi, Jimmy Palumbo, Stan Carp, Vincent Pastore, Jon Freda, Michael J. Panichelli Jr., Paul Borghese, Anthony Desio, Ted Arcidi, David Belle, Raymond Frnaza, Christopher Craig, Cedric Zimmerlin, Dominic Chianese, Oisin Stack, Sissi Duparc, Elba Sette-Camara. Directed by Luc Besson

You can choose your friends. Sometimes, you can choose your enemies. You can never choose your family however – and sometimes that might be just as well.

Giovanni Manzoni (De Niro) is an American living in France. Not just an American, however – an American from Brooklyn. And not just an American from Brooklyn – a mob boss from Brooklyn. You see, he ratted on the mob and has been taken into the witness protection program, hauling his none-too-thrilled-about-the-situation family along for the ride.

That ride has taken them from the Riviera to Normandy, shepherded by their very put-upon handler Stansfield (Jones) and his agents Di Cicco (Palumbo) and Caputo (Lombarozzi). Stansfield urges the family, now calling themselves the Blakes, to blend in but they’re having a hard time with it, as usual. Pretty wife Maggie (Pfeiffer) longs for good old American comfort food and when she asks the local grocer where the Peanut Butter is, he disdainfully tells her they don’t carry that sort of  thing there, then insults her in French to a couple of old biddy regulars at the cash register, not realizing she speaks French. Maggie doesn’t lose her temper however – she just improvises a bomb and blows up the store.

Pretty daughter Belle (Agron) is sweet as pie, but when a group of French guys drive her to the local park and make it clear that they expect her to put out under the impression that all American girls are sluts, she beats one of them to a bloody pulp with a tennis racket and takes their car. Industrious son Warren (D’Leo) quickly horns in on the black market pill and cigarette market at school, and attracts the ire of the school board while Belle attracts the eye of a callow young teaching assistant named Henri (Stack) to whom she wants to deliver up her virginity on a silver platter.

As for Giovanni, calling himself Fred, he masquerades as a writer which inspires him to write his memoirs which might not be such a good idea considering how much he knows. He also is frustrated with the quality of the town’s water which he traces back to an industrial plant on the edge of town, leading him to take extreme solutions in hand.

All of the Manzonis want nothing more than to go back to Brooklyn and resume the lives they once led but as it turns out Brooklyn is coming to them. Well-armed, as a matter of fact, and none to happy about their situation.

Besson is without a doubt the finest action director/writer/producer in France and his tutelage has turned out several other fine directors in the genre, such as Olivier Megaton. This is a cross between an homage to Martin Scorsese’s mob films (and Scorsese serves as a producer here) and a farce along the lines of Married to the Mob (which Pfeiffer memorably starred in). At times the two genres rest uneasily together but for the most part Besson keeps the balance between the two light.

This is the kind of role that De Niro has done a million times before and there is a familiarity to him playing this kind of character that gives the audience an easy in to the film. He has the good fortune to have Pfeiffer to play off of – the chemistry between the two is note-perfect and they make such a good team it makes me wonder why they were never cast together before (they actually were, in Stardust but shared no scenes together in that one).  Pfeiffer is regal here, a mafia princess with a fierce protective instinct, a touch of pyromania and a volcanic temper. She is every bit De Niro’s equal here which is a rare occurrence.

Agron, best-known for her work on Glee has a meaty role here and she sinks her teeth into it with gusto. Belle is a bit of a homicidal maniac under the veneer of a sweet girl next door. Her love for her family is fierce but she, like the rest of her brood, is a more than a little sociopathic and more than a little out-and-out crazy.

There are plenty of action scenes but it is the farce that works best here, the fish out of water scenes that have the ugly Americans trying to make things work with the even uglier French. Sure, there are plenty of stereotypes here (I’m sure there were lots of Italian-American societies cringing at their portrayal here) but it’s all in good fun and not meant to be taken seriously. As entertainment goes, this isn’t half-bad. If you have no plans to catch it in theaters, it might well be a good fit on home video instead.

REASONS TO GO: Wry sense of humor. De Niro, Pfeiffer and Jones are all stellar.

REASONS TO STAY: Kind of cliché. Predictable.

FAMILY VALUES:  There’s some violence, plenty of bad language and some sexuality.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: At the film society debate attended by Jones and De Niro, the wrong movie is sent and they instead view Goodfellas which De Niro starred in.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 9/25/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 32% positive reviews. Metacritic: 44/100

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Analyze This!

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: The Missing Person