Too soon? For many participants in the Boston Marathon and area residents, making a movie about the marathon bombings in 2013 — especially those directly affected by the terrorist attack — is definitely poking at a wound that still hasn’t healed.
Monday was Patriots’ Day in New England and the 120th annual running of the Boston Marathon. As organizers and spectators were setting up early in the morning, many were surprised to see Mark Wahlberg dressed up as a Boston police officer near the finish line to film scenes for the upcoming film Patriots Day. In the story, Wahlberg plays police sergeant Tommy Saunders, a fictional composite of the officers who were on hand when the bombs exploded near the marathon’s finish line. Three people were killed in the bombings, and 264 people were injured — many of them seriously so.
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As a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, Wahlberg is typically received as a favorite son. But several people weren’t too happy to see him filming a movie depicting the tragic events of 2013 just three years later with painful memories still so fresh.
“I think a lot of people share the same sentiment that we do — it’s a little too soon,” Bill Richard, who lost his eight-year-old son Martin in the bombings, told WEEI’s Dennis & Callahan Monday morning. Richard added that he was comfortable that someone local was involved with the production, but didn’t want to be involved in the project. He’s been assured that no one will portray anyone from his family in the film.
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Also uneasy with the filming was Boston police commissioner Bill Evans, calling the experience “unnerving.”
“It sort of brings back what happened three years ago and no one ever wants to relive that,” Evans said to the Boston Herald‘s Chris Villani. “I like to look forward and not back on the tragedy.”
Wahlberg told the New York Post that he was initially hesitant to star in a film about the Boston Marathon bombing. “When they decided they were going to make this movie,” he told the Post‘s Jaclyn Hendricks, “they had come to me and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, and I was like, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Reading the script, which he saw as a tribute to the victims, first responders and survivors, changed his mind. Furthermore, as a native son of Boston, he felt he had to be involved, rather than someone who may not have had such a personal connection to the story.
Patriots Day is scheduled for a January 13, 2017 release. The film is directed by Peter Berg (Lone Survivor) and also stars John Goodman, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin Bacon and J.K. Simmons.
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