Low-octane lemon a non-starter

Patriots Day Running time: 1hr34min Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, J.K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan Director: Peter Berg

LIKE the heroic Bostonians it celebrates, civilians and law enforcement both, Peter Berg’s Patriots Day gets the job done. The movie is, for Berg, a characteristically high-powered rendition of a real-world disaster that’s still fresh in the collective memory.

If nothing else, Berg proves himself a master of film-making efficiency; he made this complex action piece in a matter of months.

The movie is a countdown thriller to a disaster we all know is coming. Beginning hours before the 2013 edition of Boston’s worldrenowned race and moving through the manhunt that follows it, the story jumps among survivors, first responders and investigators, with Wahlberg filling the Everyman shoes, and providing a typically likable focal point, as fictional character Tommy Saunders, a sergeant with the Boston Police Department.

Wahlberg is no less engaging than in any of his somewhat underappreciated screen performances. Yet this is the least interesting of the men of duty he’s played for Berg, more a stand-in for the American working-class hero than a fully fleshed character, albeit one who’s married to a clear-eyed woman, played with dependable grit by Michelle Monaghan.

But as a man of action, he’s thoroughly convincing. Fighting his way back from an injury that has sidelined him on the job, Saunders considers his marathonday assignment an insult. He feels like a crossing guard in a clown suit, but when the day is shattered by violence, he springs into action, limp and all. In the ensuing days of investigation, he puts his homicide experience to work to interview victims and witnesses.

Berg captures the speed and precision with which the Feds, led by FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (a fittingly terse Kevin Bacon), set up a command centre in a vintage warehouse on the city’s waterfront, for their digital and DNA forensics. Even so, procedural matters aren’t Berg’s focus so much as the on-the-ground manhunt and its every high-octane thrill.

It’s a given that every introduced character will be, in one way or another, a victim of the attacks. They include a young married couple (Rachel Brosnahan, Christopher O’Shea), an MIT security guard (Jake Picking) and Dun Meng (a superb Jimmy O Yang), the Chinese app designer whose hijacking by the Tsarnaevs is by far the most tense and involving portion of the movie.

Elsewhere, the film offers up generic clashes between local cops and the Feds, with John Goodman’s Ed Davis, commissioner of the Boston police, sounding off in favour of swift action.

Bacon’s FBI honcho has no less a sense of urgency, but he’s more attuned to political currents and pitfalls, and seeks a measured public stance – until the surveillance photos of the perpetrators, Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff), are leaked to Fox News.

Melikidze and Wolff lend nuance to their portrayals of the brothers – respectively, threateningly charismatic controller and seemingly depressive acolyte – but the Tsarnaevs aren’t of particular interest to Berg except as villains. As for the elder Tsarnaev’s wife (Melissa Benoist), she figures in a stand-out scene in which an enigmatic police interrogator, played by Khandi Alexander, reads her the riot act. JK Simmons is the epitome of old-school cool as Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese in neighbouring Watertown, where Dzhokhar’s attempted escape famously ends in a backyard boat.

Berg recreates the marathon explosions themselves with full-frontal pandemonium. While Tobias A Schliessler’s restless camera-work expertly evokes the panic and confusion, it can also feel self-consciously kinetic.

Pulling back from explicit imagery, he crafts striking aerial shots of the city that suggest its upheaval. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross intensifies the action with its jabs and tremors, from chords to ticks to clangs to drumbeats.

Yet however technically proficient the movie, however heartfelt its admiration for everyone who worked to contain the damage, nothing proves remotely as affecting as the documentary footage and interviews that Berg includes at film’s end. Some stories don’t require special effects. – Hollywood Reporter Monster Trucks Running time: 1hr 45min Starring: Lucas Till, Rob Lowe, Jane Levy, Danny Glover, Barry Pepper, Amy Ryan, Thomas Lennon Director: Chris Wedge HEY, how about monster trucks with… wait for it… real monsters in them? Cool, right? That’s the gist of the plot that is Monster Trucks, a tone-deaf mix of live action and computer-generated animation that never clicks into gear.

Directed by Chris Wedge, who launched the wildly successful Ice Age franchise in 2002, this lowoctane lemon will likely struggle to find an appreciative juvenile audience.

Lucas Till plays the teenage Tripp whose small town life gets a shot of adrenalin with the arrival of a gas-guzzling creature from the Earth’s underbelly, who was displaced by an oil company’s drilling operation.

Tripp escapes from his problems at Danny Glover’s character’s junkyard, where he scavenges for parts for the pick-up truck he’s been trying to get up and running. He ends up attaining maximum speed with the creature he’s named Creech, who is fond of hiding under his truck’s hood and wrapping his tentacles around the axles – which is helpful for outrunning the oil firm’s evil boss (Rob Lowe), who is intent on achieving containment.

There’s a renewable resources lesson here somewhere, but the film-makers never commit to an overriding theme or mood long enough to make a connection with the viewer.

While Wedge’s animation background comes in handy, Monster Trucks is a clunky nonstarter. – Hollywood Reporter