Before officially watching this movie, just looking at the name of the movie, many people may mistakenly think that this is a typical Hollywood-style blockbuster, full of patriotic dreams and heroic rescue bridges that have been rendered and processed countless times.
And the beginning of the movie also perfectly replicates the classic story opening of many Hollywood cop blockbusters: a policeman who is still depressed in middle age is the first to appear.
Obviously, this character played by Mark Watsenberg will be the protagonist of the movie, the so-called character with a heroic aura, followed by a young couple, a young and ignorant female student and a young male police officer, a Chinese man with a parent video, a Muslim family, and a diligent old police officer...
The characters do not intersect at the beginning of the film, and seem to be spending their ordinary and ordinary days until the beginning of the Boston Marathon, connecting everyone together.
It was also from here that I suddenly realized that this was not a Hollywood-style action blockbuster, but a documentary film based on the 2013 Boston terrorist attacks.
In any case, it is very unwise for "Attack on Boston" to be released at the same time as the eye-catching superhero assemblage "Justice League", and this suspenseless duel has already decided the winner before it has begun.
Especially in the eyes of Chinese audiences, "Justice League", which is full of explosive fight scenes and special effects rendering, has no big scenes and no special effects to add points, and "Terrorist Attack on Boston", which relies solely on narrative to win, is more watchable.
I believe this is also the reason why many viewers finally choose not to watch this movie when the movie is released, but after a few years, I would say that compared with the "Justice League" stewed in a pot, this seemingly unobtrusive "Terrorist Attack on Boston" is more worthy of people's careful taste.
It is often said that the main theme of the work is a specialty of China, and I believe that "Terrorist Attack on Boston" can change the inner views of many people. The work not only hyped up the American dream that is now questioned, but also won the support and recognition of many audiences.
When "Terror Attack on Boston" was released in the United States, its Rotten Tomatoes freshness score was 79%, and the professional rating of film critics was even lower, only 6.9, but the movie was 90% popular with the audience.
If evaluated from a professional point of view, "Terrorist Attack on Boston" chose to set up a fictional police character as the protagonist of the entire movie, and strung together many characters and clues in the movie, which obviously made the protagonist of the movie too heavy.
The flaws in the narrative rhythm and the inner portrayal of the characters make this film destined not to become a classic masterpiece in the eyes of professional media, and the overall can only be said to have reached the passing level.
But from the perspective of the average audience, a real event, a group of Hollywood superstars and a movie story that is basically always online make the movie undoubtedly win a lot of people's hearts.
Of course, the reason why the film can get a good audience reputation is also related to the title and intention of "Terrorist Attack on Boston".
The English name of "Terrorist Attack on Boston" is "PatriotsDay", which means "Patriots Day", and the so-called "Patriot Day" refers to the third Monday of April every year, which is the anniversary of the American Revolutionary War.
On this day, many commemorative events will be held in the United States, including the famous Boston Marathon. But in recent years, as social contradictions in the United States have continued to emerge, this day has also become a day for the public to release protests and opposition to the government.
So, the Boston terrorist attacks that took place on this day a few years ago undoubtedly have a very special significance for the American people today.
The filmmakers obviously know that ordinary people who are full of doubts about the "American Dream" need to be mentally cheered up, so the whole film strives to portray the indomitability of ordinary little people in the face of terrorist attacks.
The high audience rating of the film strongly proves that this narrative style of small view and big picture, interlacing of virtual and real is deeply loved by the audience.
On April 15, 2013, just as the 117th Boston Marathon was in full swing, two earth-shattering noises ended the happy and peaceful atmosphere.
Two bombs detonated near the finish line, killing three people and injuring 183 others, including Lu Lingzi, a Chinese student at Boston University.
After the outbreak, the FBI and local police worked together to quickly formalize the socially damaging public safety incident as a terrorist attack, and the 26-year-old Brothers Tamirnan Shaniev and 19-year-old Joka Shaniev were quickly identified as suspects and shot and arrested the next day.
Basically, the whole movie is reinterpreted and restored the real situation that happened at that time as it was.
Except for the fictional character played by Mark Wahlberg as the police protagonist, the other characters in the film basically have real prototypes, and the actual explosion scenes are also highly restored and reproduced in the film.
If these can only be regarded as the basic requirements of a documentary film, then the multi-line narrative structure adopted by the film makes the film's excitement and tension unprecedented.
At the beginning of the film, from the change of several characters, the basic structure of the multi-line narrative structure is clearly defined.
The different views and positions of different characters intersect and collide with the continuous development of the plot, allowing the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the whole process of the whole event from the outbreak to the end.
Thanks to the efforts of the creative team, the audience is no longer just a pure bystander, but more like a witness to the event, empathizing with the experiences of those who were hurt during the event.
For example, the young couple was originally just one of the many spectators of the marathon that day, but the relentless bomb caused them both to be seriously injured and eventually had to face the harsh reality of amputation of both limbs.
Another example is the veteran sheriff, who is more than half a hundred years old, single-handedly confronting and exchanging fire with terrorists. And Meng Dan, a Chinese student who gave important help in the pursuit of terrorists.
It is the presence of these characters that makes this film more authentic and believable, and deeply shakes people's hearts.
If "Top Gun" made the positive image of the US Navy deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, then this "Terrorist Attack on Boston" allowed the American people to re-understand these unknown but always stick to their posts of police and officials around them.
In the whole movie, there are no corrupt officials that hollywood blockbusters usually appear, and there are no thrilling plot reversals, just real cities and real ordinary people.
Many people may say that the first police officer to rush to the front in the face of a moment of crisis must be a fearless iron-blooded tough guy, but the movie tells us that this is not the case.
The little people who later became called heroes were actually just ordinary people with the same flesh and blood, just like us, and could also be a son, husband or father.
So when the policeman played by Matt Damon returns home from the explosion and hugs his wife and cries silently, the audience can re-understand the hero as an ordinary person from a new and realistic perspective.
They were equally afraid of death and loss, but they still rushed to the front for the safety of the public's lives, and this courage and determination to overcome fear was actually more admirable than their later heroic feats.
Today, when more and more do not believe in the true feelings of the world, the film truly reproduces the moving story of a couple who lost their legs in the accident, never gave up in the face of the tribulations of fate, and worked hard to live.
He lost both legs, she lost both legs, and they would anxiously ask about each other's life and death at the first moment of waking up, and would hug each other tightly at the moment they saw each other, saying "It's good to live with you!" ”
There is also a scene in the movie where the body of the 8-year-old boy who died tragically due to the explosion is finally removed from the scene of the accident on the second day of the explosion.
All the police officers and accident investigators present stopped their work at this moment and silently saluted him.
After the explosion, because the boy may have remnants of bomb fragments that could directly prove the specific circumstances of the explosion accident, in order to prevent the scene from being destroyed, his body had to remain at the cold explosion site for one night until the preliminary investigation was completed.
It can be said that this unfortunate little boy who died is also the behind-the-scenes hero and "hero" who finally brought the culprits of this tragedy to justice.
Among the many popular culture symbols in the United States, superheroes are one of the most widely known. But in the sudden explosion, we don't see the so-called superheroes in the movie, but we see the Boston people who are braver than the superheroes. In the first time of the explosion, many ordinary people were not busy scattering and fleeing, but chose to stay at the scene to save the injured in the first time.
When the police could not find the terrorists, it was the elderly who took the initiative to report to the police, and in order to successfully take down the bandits, they rushed forward desperately.
It is precisely because of the existence of ordinary people who are not superheroes, but are better than superheroes, that the culprits of the "Boston Marathon Bombing" can be brought to justice in the first place.