Patriots Day (film)

Plot

On April 15, 2013, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonate two bombs during the Boston Marathon, causing widespread panic. A young couple, Patrick Downes and Jessica Kesky, are injured and taken to separate hospitals, where they're both required to have their legs amputated; while family man Steve Woolfenden is injured and separated from his young son, Leo, who is rescued by the police and taken to a safe location.

FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers is assigned to investigate the bombings in collaboration with Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese, while Police Sergeant Tommy Saunders searches for evidence and helps people that have been injured or separated from their loved ones in the chaos, including Patrick and Jessica as well as Steven and Leo. FBI analysts review footage of the bombing and identify Dzhokhar and Tamerlan as suspects, but DesLauriers is reluctant to release their pictures to the public without further evidence. His hand is forced when the pictures are leaked to the press, while Pugliese's men begin conducting door-to-door searches for the pair.

Attempting to lie low, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan kill officer Sean Collier to steal his gun and carjack student Dun Meng, announcing their plans to conduct another bombing in New York City. Just before Dzhokhar leaves the store, Meng quickly escapes the car and goes to the different convenience store so that he can call the police. Saunders arrives at the scene, learns of the brothers' plan and is given the stolen car's GPS tracker code, leading police to the pair's hideout. The ensuing shootout sees several officers injured, while Tamerlan is shot by Pugliese and run over by Dzhokhar, killing him. Dzhokhar escapes in the chaos; meanwhile, Tamerlan's wife Katherine Russell and Dzhokhar's college friends are later detained by the FBI Hostage Rescue Team and questioned by the High-Value Interrogation Group, but Katherine refuses to disclose any knowledge of her husband's illegal activities, while Dzhokhar's friends appear oblivious to his plans, despite having earlier found bomb components in his possessions. A local man name David Henneberry later finds Dzhokhar hiding under the sheets of his boat and calls the police. Dzhokhar is quickly surrounded and arrested after a brief standoff, as Saunders and his colleagues celebrate. The Boston police are invited to attend a Boston Red Sox game, where David Ortiz thanks them for their heroism and telling them to "stay strong".

The epilogue reveals that Dzhokhar has been sentenced to death by lethal injection and is awaiting for an appeal in federal prison, his college friends were arrested for obstructing the investigation and that Russell is still under investigation for her possible involvement. The authorities responsible for the investigation and the survivors of the bombing then give statements celebrating Boston's newfound sense of unity.

Cast

This film also includes a cameo appearance of the real Dun Meng inside the pizza restaurant.

Development

The film was one of what had originally been three proposed about the bombings, the other two being Boston Strong (based on the book of the same title), set to be directed by Daniel Espinosa and star Casey Affleck, and Stronger, about bombing victim Jeff Bauman, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. It was to depict Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis' experiences during the manhunt. CBS Films purchased the rights to Boston Strong and merged it into the existing script. Stronger was made as a separate film, and is set for a 2017 release.

On March 31, 2015, CBS Films announced that it was producing the film as Patriots' Day, depicting the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and manhunt. The film's script was written by Matt Charman, and focused on Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis. The film is also based on the book Boston Strong and material from 60 Minutes. Its final version, not focused specifically on Davis, was written by Peter Berg, Matt Cook, and Joshua Zetumer. Mark Wahlberg plays police officer Sgt. Tommy Saunders, and produced the film along with Scott Stuber, Dylan Clark, Stephen Levinson, Michael Radutzky, Hutch Parker, and Dorothy Aufiero. By February 2016, the title had dropped the apostrophe to become Patriots Day. Also by then, J. K. Simmons had joined the cast as Watertown PD Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese.

CBS Films and Lionsgate co-financed the film, with Lionsgate also handling distribution. On March 8, 2016, Jimmy O. Yang joined the film's cast to play Dun Meng, who was carjacked by the Tsarnaev brothers. On the same day, Vincent Curatola was cast to play the mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, who was in office for his fifth term when the bombings took place. On March 11, 2016, John Goodman signed on to play former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. On March 25, 2016, James Colby joined the film to play William B. Evans, a Boston PD superintendent, and following him, Michelle Monaghan also joined the film, to play Carol Saunders, Tommy's wife. On March 31, Kevin Bacon joined the cast as FBI agent Rick Deslauriers, and on April 4, 2016, Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze were cast in the film as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, responsible for the bombing and later manhunt. Michael Beach later joined the film to play the Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick.

On April 6, 2016, Rachel Brosnahan and Christopher O'Shea joined the film to play newlyweds Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, who were at the finish line, and were both seriously injured but survived. The following day, Lana Condor was cast in the role of Sean Collier's prospective girlfriend. On May 5, 2016, Melissa Benoist was cast in the film to play Katherine Russell, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, with Khandi Alexander set to play a law enforcement interrogator, Jake Picking as MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, who was killed three days after the bombing, and James Dumont appearing as a government official. David Ortiz, who retired from the Boston Red Sox after the 2016 season, appears as himself.

Filming

Principal photography on the film began on March 29, 2016, in Quincy and Boston, with production offices and a soundstage set up in one of the Centennial Park warehouses in Peabody, Massachusetts. All interior scenes at the FBI warehouse headquarters, as well as exterior 'command tent' scenes, were shot there. Filming was previously scheduled to take place on Laurel Street in Watertown, to recreate the shootout that took place between police and the Tsarnaev brothers on the actual location, but after objections by residents, town officials denied permission for the film to be shot there. The City of Malden was approached to stand in for Laurel Street Watertown, and ended up with eight locations in the film. The film crew then approached University of Massachusetts Dartmouth officials for permission to shoot some scenes at the campus, a request that was denied by its chancellor, Gerry Kavanaugh.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the Tsarnaev brothers killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, had allowed the film production to shoot "entirely peaceful scenes" on the campus for three days in June. Filming also took place at Collier's actual house. The marathon finish line on Boylston Street was duplicated at Naval Air Station South Weymouth, in addition to scenes filmed at the real finish line on the day of the 2016 marathon. Dzhokhar's capture was filmed in Framingham, Massachusetts on its third anniversary. Additional filming was conducted at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain on April 14, 2016, and at Lasell College in Newton, Massachusetts on May 18, 2016.

Music

Academy Award-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were hired to write the musical score for the film. All music composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

Release

Patriots Day premiered on the closing night of the AFI Fest on November 17, 2016. It had a red carpet premiere at the Boch Centre Wang Theater on December 14, 2016. The film began a limited release on December 21, 2016, and a wide release on January 13, 2017.

Box office

As of February 28, 2017, Patriots Day has grossed $31.8 million in the United States and Canada and $9.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $41.4 million, against a production budget of $45 million.

In North America, the film had its expansion alongside Monster Trucks, The Bye Bye Man and Sleepless, as well as the wide releases of Silence and Live by Night, and was expected to gross $18–20 million from 3,120 theaters in its four-day MLK opening weekend. It made $560,000 from Thursday night previews, less than the $860,000 made by Berg and Wahlberg's Deepwater Horizon in September. The film ended up opening to $12.9 million (a four-day total of $14.2 million), finishing below expectations and 6th at the box office.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 188 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Patriots Day offers a stirring, solidly crafted tribute to the heroes of a real-life American tragedy without straying into exploitative action thriller territory." On Metacritic, the film has a normalized score of 69 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "A+" on an A+ to F scale, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service to receive such a score.

Though the film has mostly garnered approval among critics, many Boston-based publications criticized it for glamorizing the events it was based upon, and for the film's focus on Wahlberg's fictional character. In his review for The Boston Globe, Ty Burr wrote: "It’s professionally made, slickly heartfelt, and is offered up as an act of civic healing. At best, it’s unnecessary. At worst, it’s vaguely insulting." Writing for Esquire, Boston-based critic Luke O'Neil also criticized Wahlberg's character, stating: "For all his talk of honoring his people, Wahlberg seems content to rely on the most hackneyed of Masshole signifiers in their portrayal."