In the new trailer for Patriots Day, Kevin Bacon, playing head of Boston FBI Richard DesLauriers, looks at a ball bearing in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and says, “It’s terrorism.” This is the best part of the trailer, and probably not in the way that the filmmakers intended.
The trailer is below, but if for some reason you can’t watch, summon up the image that came to mind when you first learned that Mark Wahlberg was going to be in a movie about the Boston Marathon bombings, because it was accurate. I swear that this is true: Wahlberg plays a fictional composite cop named Tommy Saunders.
Patriots Day checks all the boxes: a tense score that becomes triumphant, sloppy Boston accents—especially from John Goodman as Commissioner Ed Davis—and Wahlberg starting a sentence with “We gotta.” It’s a film that will expect its audience to cheer as a woman in hijab asks about her rights and is told, “You ain’t got shit, sweetheart.”
Mark Wahlberg, one can surmise, loves being in Peter Berg’s movies because it allows him to star as the most heroic of heroes in his attempt to mimic Tom Hanks’s career of picking roles where he plays complex but generally pleasant protagonists. That Wahlberg’s not anywhere close to being as likable or talented as Hanks doesn’t seem likely to stop him.
H/t to Sophie