![]() His film is loose and episodic, muddling along, much as Jeff does, between progress and relapse, with occasional digressions for humor or pathos. Green, the one-time art house wunderkind ( George Washington, All the Real Girls), who became better known for directing stoner comedies ( Pineapple Express, and HBO’s Eastbound and Down) colours strictly within the lines. Throughout, the camera’s closeness - in the bathroom, in bed, getting in and out of cars - emphasizes Jeff’s awkwardness with his new body, and underscores the disconnection between Bauman’s isolation and the media upbeat hype. Strangers either congratulate or occasionally hassle him in bars. Oprah wants to interview him and his mother is excited by the fame. ![]() Unprepared for his celebrity, doped on pain-killers, Bauman is confused and disturbed that people find his loss heroic. When he’s pushed out in his wheelchair into sports arenas and stadiums, the cheering crowds trigger flashbacks to the bombing day. Specifically, he became a symbol of resilience, a representation of the “Boston Strong” civic boosterism campaign created in the wake of the bombings. ![]() The victim became “kind of a symbol to a lotta people,” as his father ( Clancy Brown) tells him in the movie. Later, when Bauman awoke from surgery to amputate his legs, he helped the police by identifying one of the bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. That status was thanks to an emblematic Associated Press photograph of him in a wheel chair, torniquets around his shredded legs, accompanied by a cowboy-hatted rescue worker. Three people died and sixteen people lost limbs in the bombings but Bauman became its most famous victim. ![]() Well before Erin reaches the Boylston Street finish line, the first of two bombs go off. Jeff’s fecklessness has led to his the latest break from his goal-directed girlfriend, Erin ( Tatiana Maslany), who complains that Jeff “never shows up.” The goal-driven Erin is running the marathon, and this time, Jeff decides this time he will show up, waiting with a home-made sign at the finish line. That’s especially true of Mom, played by Miranda Richardson, who we first meet falling off a stool at the bar where Jeff goes to watch the ball game with his buddies. ![]() He works as a Costco deli employee and lives at home with his clichéd, sprawling, brawling Beantown family, who spend more time at the bars than is good for them. This is the second movie about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, after Peter Berg’s fictionalized Patriots Day , named for the state holiday when the Boston Marathon takes place each spring.īefore the bombing, in the movie’s portrayal, Bauman was a twenty-something working-class Red Sox-loving goofball. ![]()
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