Marathon Mark shows who’s Bos
Wahlberg back with his favourite
I LEARNED plenty from Deepwater Horizon – the tale of the 2010 oil rig blast from director Peter Berg and actor/producer Mark Wahlberg.
That gritty disaster flick told us precisely where the explosion began, who fought to contain it and why negligent oil bosses let it happen.
Their follow-up movie about the immediate aftermath of 2013 Boston Marathon bombing isn’t quite so educational.
You’ll see how the FBI, the local cops, the politicians and the people of Boston worked together during the four-day hunt for the bombers.
But everything the film tells us of Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Themo Melikidze and Alex Wolff) you’ll probably know already.
That older brother Tamerlan was a porn-loving bodybuilder and Dzhokhar a scruffy dope-dealer was well reported.
I’m not sure if there is a standard template for lunatics but some mental gymnastics must have been involved for them to see themselves as footsoldiers for a righteous God.
And you would think their relationship, the subject of much media speculation at the time, would have handed the screenwriters another rich vein to explore.
Their lack of curiousity leaves the film feeling a little underpowered. Still, thanks to meticulous research, expert staging and powerful performances it manages to make it over the finish line.
Surprisingly, gobby Boston police sergeant Tommy Saunders (Wahlberg) isn’t one of the “patriots” Berg is paying homage to. He’s mainly here to anchor the drama and embody the city’s plucky spirit.
The real heroes are the young cop gunned down for refusing to hand over his weapon (Jake Picking), the Chinese lad who tips off police after escaping a car-jacking (Jimmy O. Yang) and the officer who stands up to the bombers in the climactic shootout (JK Simmons).
It’s one of the messiest and most authentic gunfights I’ve seen. Berg conveys the chaos and confusion as the killers shoot and hurl bombs on a suburban street,
Berg knows that showing the policemen’s terror as they cower behind their squad cars doesn’t make them appear weak.
It makes their refusal to stand down seem even more heroic.