A good movie

Since I kept hearing some pretty good things about this movie, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, after watching the rather abysmal ‘Spenser Confidential’ and ‘Mile 22’, it was rather satisfying to see that, at some point, Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg actually knew what they were doing. Indeed, at the time, their gimmick was to tell together some real-life stories (see also 'Deepwater Horizon' and 'Lone Survivor') and I have to admit that, each time, they really nailed it. In this case, I was actually rather impressed by the beginning scenes. Indeed, Berg gave each set of characters just a few minutes each but he still managed to properly introduce them in a very organic and believable way. To be honest, I was rather surprised that Wahlberg was actually the only one playing a fictional character but it did explain how this cop was pretty much always around at the most crucial moments. At least, he didn't end up playing one of these super-cops solving the whole case by himself, in fact, Wahlberg was actually quite vulnerable in a few scenes and, in the process, he probably gave here one of his best performances. Concerning the story itself, even though I was aware of this tragedy, I didn't really know how it really went down in details and, once again, I was fairly impressed by the approach chosen by Peter Berg. Indeed, it seems that they went really into details to reproduce these events so, at times, it did have a nice documentary feeling, but there were also some really tensed moments so, the end-result was a highly realistic thriller which was quite spellbinding to behold. To be honest, even if I understand why they did add a supplement at the end of the movie where interviews with real life people were shown, it did feel overly patriotic and, somehow, it turned these tragic events into some kind of PR operation for the city of Boston in particular and for the USA in general. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was maybe not a masterpiece, it was still a very well made thriller based on actual events and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.