[CRITICAL] STALKING IN BOSTON

In his quest for authenticity, Berg forget his story and his characters, making Tracks in Boston or a good documentary or a good thriller.

Peter Berg would have definitively finished with the science-fiction highly touted and mercantile (Hancock, Battleship) ? At least that is what one might expect with his latest creation inspired by real events : track AT BOSTON back on the investigation surrounding the double bombing on April 15, 2013 during the Boston Marathon, and the tracking down of the terrorists that followed. Became something of THE american expert of the film is based on true events (The Kingdom, of The blood and tears, Deepwater), Berg continues its business patriotic through a tribute to the people and the values unifying dear to the star-spangled banner.

It is through a reconstitution increased places, characters, elements of the survey that the cinema hyper-realistic of Berg finds its origins documentary. According to him, there is only one way to handle this type of event with the respect and dignity that it should be, and that requires authenticity to any event. True paradox when we know that his film is fed, first, to the cinema of kind (with some degree of effectiveness dramatic), digital imaging (cameras), film news (camera on shoulder, archive pictures), the picture so-called realistic contains disturbing and participates in the porosity between alternate universe and the real world. If he calls briskly these different kinds of images, this is only for the purpose of obtaining a renewal of realism, never to show how the nature of an image vary its value (aesthetic, symbolic, political).

It will be beautiful we do believe in the qualities “documentarisantes” of his fiction, Berg not fooling anyone in the end. From the moment he puts his camera, and agency, a point of view on these police officers or these terrorists, he ordered a world mediated by the domination of its own powers (technological, ideological, etc.). The fiction is not used so as to offer us what we want to see : the hunting and killing of the two terrorists. The viewer wants to see the debauchery of means, materials and human resources deployed following the terrorist attack ; he wants to see the emergence of a mutually supportive community (of all colors, of all social classes) against the powers of Evil. And track AT BOSTON will give him all of this.

“For fear of annoying Stalking at Boston relies more on the clichés of the genre of the thriller” Click To Tweet

Conversely, Deepwater functioned more character immersive – Berg plunged the viewer into the daily life of a oil rig jobs little known, with their own jargon, their own hierarchy. In STALKING IN BOSTON, Berg loses what made the originality of a spatio-temporal setting in the service of a dramatically effective (the disaster movie, with its suspense). For fear of annoying probably, it depends more on the clichés of the genre, especially thriller (the endless “engueulades” between local police and FBI agents), and a characterization is inappropriate and summary of most of the characters. For the sake of truthfulness, he wants to pay tribute to all the world, and not to forget anyone, but what turns out to be that of the sketches of the characters eventually suffer greatly.

Abandoning, therefore, the characters for the benefit of a re-enactment millimétrée sometimes incomprehensible for the picture of the role of the group interviewing the wife of the terrorist STALKING IN BOSTON no longer has a effectiveness dramatic Deepwater (at least its first part). The story is lost in accumulating all of these are intended, as fast open and closed. Although he is always fascinated, well, mostly appreciative, of those ordinary men, Berg points only on them a heroism citizen bombastic, a patriotism of circumstances.

In what turns out to be a fake choral film, it is Mark Wahlberg, who plays here the police officer Tommy Saunders, that the honor of embodying in itself the “voice” of Boston, that of a strong community that stands against the forces of Evil. Handicapped by a knee injury, it goes beyond the pain to, in turn, help citizens injured in the attack, actively seek out the terrorists and take part in their death or arrest. Portrait of summary of everything that America is better, Saunders has all of the plodder energetic and persevering. He done overtime without “flinching” and no longer even have the time to take a bath yet well deserved. He is also a loving husband, although a little borderline (in Hollywood, these “small” demons are called generally police violence, alcoholism…), but it is to make it more human, more “normal” and “realistic”. Any way when it comes to terrorism, the international journal of everyday life are quickly forgotten, to facilitate the large gathering around a common love, the last barrier against hate.

Antoine Gaudé

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