There’s something very satisfying about films that follow professionals tested by extraordinary situations – movies like Paul Greengrass’s United 93 for example. Director Peter Berg has already delivered one such celebration of the skilled everyman with Deepwater Horizon. He reunites with Deepwater star Mark Wahlberg for Patriots Day, a taut, multi-stranded account of the Boston marathon bombing.
As a police procedural, this is first-rate: unflinching, briskly paced film-making that pieces together the fast-moving investigation in a wholly satisfying manner. The nature of the terror attack means that there are distressing images of injuries. Berg doesn’t shy away from this, but he pulls back out of a sense of decency when it comes to the fatalities. Boston-born Wahlberg is strong in the central role, a tough-guy cop with a temper and a tendency to speak his mind and to follow up with a punch when necessary. My main reservations are with a slight laziness in the screenplay that requires every key character to be made sympathetic by giving them a potential love interest. It’s a cheap device that undermines the quality of the rest of the film.
