Back in 2006, being hopelessly unaware of how people actually feel about tragedy, I heavily supported Paul Greengrass’s right to make 9/11 flick United 93. Fifteen year old me couldn’t fathom how the very production would cause New Yorkers to boo its trailer when it played in a theater.
A decade later, and only three years removed from the Boston Marathon bombing, I now fully and totally get it.
Thanks, Mark Wahlberg and Peter Berg.
The new trailer for the Berg-directed Patriots Day was released today, and it strikes a less maudlin tone than its previous teaser. It also offers more hints about what the movie — based on the book Boston Strong by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge — holds in store aside from crying and Michelle Monaghan’s trial-at-the-Hague-worthy accent. The clip features a Muslim woman being told she doesn’t have any rights (or “shit” as the interpreter calls them), shows Wahlberg talking about the power of love, and gives Kevin Bacon another Boston-based law enforcement role after his appearance in Black Mass last year. There’s not much else to say, really, because you likely lived through all the gory details.
For some reason, I keep thinking about how Brookline Avenue, where the Phoenix offices once were, is now soaked and covered in the Wahlbergs’ gaudy green “Ws,” the color and inverted shape suggesting that someone had thrown up the McDonald’s logo. It’s a bummer that someone might go see this movie at the Regal Fenway Stadium 13 & RPX, and then go eat at Wahlburgers after.
America.
Of course, there will be plenty to say about this movie in the upcoming days and weeks (it opens in limited release next month, December 21, just in time for the holidays), and it still has a chance to prove itself worthy and above the bad taste it’s made in (like Berg’s Deepwater Horizon did for other critics earlier this year).
But as of right now we’re finding it hard to be in its corner.