Iko Uwais might be the most physically talented action star on the planet. His work in Merantau, Headshot, and The Raid films speaks for itself. He barely needs the assistance of wires or stuntmen; he definitely doesn’t need editing help to hide his doubles or make him look tougher than he is. If you’re going to cut u...
In 2015, mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg announced a film they were working on called Mile 22, which follows a CIA agent who has to transport an informant across an Indonesian city to a getaway car that’s — you guessed it — 22 miles away. Since then, the pair have made disaster blockbusters Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon, and now they’re looking to get back to their passion project. This time, because they can, they’re making Mile 22 into a trilogy.
There is a whole lot going on with Universal’s Scarface reboot. Today brought a few big announcements: first off, Joel and Ethan Coen, who are script doctors in their own right, have been tapped to rework the screenplay. The two have previously polished the scripts of Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. But we’re not done yet. While Antoine Fuqua exited the project to focus on the Equalizer sequel, the film is close to landing a new director, and Peter Berg and Hell or High Water’s David Mackenzie are frontrunners.
When it comes to making “true story” movies, there’s always a certain sense of pressure on everyone involved to be as true to the real events as the movie allows. That’s what Mark Wahlberg and co. were most concerned with when it came to making Patriots Day, but it appears their attempt to “do it right” still left some people in the dust. Now, Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s widow Katherine Russell says that the movie’s portrayal of her is unjust and “unfair.”
When making a movie about any real historical tragedy, especially if it’s recent, there’s an onus on the people behind the project to be true to the material. No one in Hollywood, save for maybe the Afflecks, loves Boston more than Mark Wahlberg, and he’s said before that his prime concern with making Patriots Day, a drama about the Boston Marathon bombings, is “getting it right.” A new trailer before this week’s release of the film hammers that point home even further, with footage from the movie intercut with statements from the real people who were there that day.
Noted actor, model and erstwhile Funky Bunch member Mark Wahlberg raised a few eyebrows in 2012 when he claimed that had he boarded the planes used for the September 11 terrorist attacks, things would have gone down a little differently. Suggesting that you could have singlehandedly prevented the most traumatic disaster in American history is big talk, but now Wahlberg will get the chance to pretend to put the money where his terrorist-fighting mouth is with Patriots Day, a dramatization of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. We may be too late for a Mark Wahlberg-led United 93 reimagined as a two-hour beatdown, but this looks like the next best thing.
When you make a movie about any sort of national disaster, especially one still so far in the forefront of the American consciousness as the 2013 Boston marathon bombings, it’s important to treat the film’s subjects with respect. You can’t sacrifice the truth just to put in some fictional drama, and director Peter Berg knows this, opting instead to involve as many people as possible in Patriots Day who were there on the day of the bombings. A new featurette, which came out today, shows how Berg and his associates, along with the film’s stars, did everything they could to provide a sense of authenticity to the film.
Director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg are tackling two devastating events in recent American history in their latest films. Following the recent Deepwater Horizon, the filmmaker and actor’s next film this year will follow the tragedy of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in Patriots Day.