Peter Berg’s last few films — with Mark Wahlberg, no less — have been about the perseverance of the human spirit and true tales from Americana. His latest, Deepwater Horizon, is still in theaters, but he’ll release his next project by year’s end, Patriots Day, starring Wahlberg in a dramatized story of the Boston Marathon bombings.
In a new featurette, released on Yahoo Movies, the director, his star, producer Michael Radutzky, production designer Tom Duffield, and some of the other cast members discussed the importance of “getting it right.”
Wahlberg remarks, “The truth matters in a situation like this,” while Radutzky adds, “If we wanted to make a movie that involved all these folks, they needed to know that we were paying extraordinary attention to the facts.” That alone is a big promise, and we’ll see if they fulfill it. Berg’s Lone Survivor proved to be one of the most realistic war movies, but an article that appeared on Slate unearthed some of its creative liberties with true events.
Watch the featurette below.
Perhaps even more so than Deepwater Horizon or Lone Survivor, the Boston Marathon bombings are a sensitive matter for Americans. HBO’s The Newsroom made headlines, both negative and positive, for featuring the events in an episode that lambasted media outlets for poor coverage. This film, however, seems very much focused on the heroes of the day.
Patriots Day includes Supergirl Melissa Benoist, Michelle Monaghan (True Detective season 1), Kevin Bacon, J.K. Simmons, John Goodman, and Lana Condor (Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse). The film will hit New York and Los Angeles theaters on December 21st before going wide on January 13th. Here’s the official plot synopsis:
In the aftermath of an unspeakable attack, Police Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Mark Wahlberg) joins courageous survivors, first responders and investigators in a race against the clock to hunt down the bombers before they strike again. Weaving together the stories of Special Agent Richard Deslauriers (Kevin Bacon), Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman), Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (J.K. Simmons) and nurse Carol Saunders (Michelle Monaghan) this visceral and unflinching chronicle captures the suspense of one of the most sophisticated manhunts in law enforcement history and celebrates the strength of the people of Boston.
