Boston native Mark Wahlberg has strong ties to this city, some more positive than others. He’s a world-famous celebrity who shows his Boston pride any chance he gets. And now he’s set to make a movie of one of Boston’s most tragic events, the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.
The movie, backed by CBS Films and called “Patriot’s Day,” lists Wahlberg, along with a few others including “60 Minutes” producer Michael Radutzky, as producers. The script is still in progress, but it will be centered around former Boston Police Department Commissioner Ed Davis’ account of the bombings that he gave to “60 Minutes” on April 29, 2013.
“Patriot’s Day” will recall the details of the police department’s chase of the bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, from April 15, the day of the incident, to April 19, the day he was infamously captured in a boat in Watertown, Entertainment Weekly reported.
“There is nothing more compelling than a real story populated by real heroes,” said CBS Films President Terry Press in a press release. “The team that we have assembled for this project is determined to give audiences a very personal look at what occurred during the days when the eyes of the world were on the city of Boston and how a group of contemporary patriots faced the crisis.”
However, perhaps Wahlberg is not necessarily the best man for the job. He has quite a colorful past in Boston, including a criminal record he famously attempted to get erased back in December 2014. In 1988, way back before he was even “Marky Mark,” a 16-year-old Mark Wahlberg assaulted and verbally berated a Vietnamese storeowner.
Another young Wahlberg incident, which occurred in 1986, included a class of students that was harassed by the now-actor. Mary Belmonte, the teacher of said class, spoke to the Boston Globe about his past transgressions.
“I’m sure he’s sincere and he wants to clear his name,” she said. “But it would be nice if he could apologize and really own up to what he was.”
Where is Ben Affleck, fellow Boston native and ultimate nice guy, when you need him?
Maybe siding with his brother. In addition to the criminal controversy, there’s set to be not one but two competing movies about the bombing. The second film, titled “Boston Strong,” has Casey Affleck’s name attached to it and will likely be released at around the same time “Patriot’s Day” is, if we had to take a guess. Affleck’s film will be based on a book of the same name by Casey Sherman and Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge.
Hollywood very clearly loves tragedy: according to the International Movie Database, there are 38 movies about the 9/11 terror attacks, the first of which came out in 2002. And why not? It’s interesting, it’s real and it’s profitable. As long as the movie is made in a way that is respectful and tasteful, what could be bad?
But maybe it’s too soon. We’re not far enough removed from this tragedy for it to be respectful or tasteful, especially with the trial digging into the city’s wounds that have just only begun to heal. With the trial happening right now and the second marathon after the bombing happening later this month, it’s bad timing.
There are victims and witnesses that still face the aftermath of the bombings every day, and the incident is still so fresh in everyone’s minds. Everyone remembers where they were when Tsarnaev was found in Watertown. It will make money, of course — tragedy sells, but at what cost?
The people who are most likely to see this movie, or other movies based on real tragedies that affected real people, are the ones who didn’t experience said events themselves. It plays into the mentality of, “Oh, something like this could never happen to me,” but it did happen to people, and it happened to people in Boston.
It plays into why people are so fascinated by tragedy. They can experience it through the screen while not having to deal with the real horrors that came of it. For those who did have to deal with that, what happened is never going to be OK or profitable.
A blockbuster, or a pair of blockbusters, dramatizing the bombings isn’t going to do much but capitalize on a tragedy.
