The 2017 film Patriots Day is a docudrama based on the true events of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent city-wide manhunt. The movie chronicles the terrorist attack, the immediate aftermath, and the intensive investigation by local and federal law enforcement to identify and apprehend the perpetrators, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
The narrative is constructed from extensive research and is adapted primarily from the non-fiction book Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge. To achieve authenticity, the film portrays many real individuals involved in the events, including Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers, and Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese. However, the central protagonist, Sergeant Tommy Saunders (played by Mark Wahlberg), is a fictional composite character created to represent the collective experiences and perspectives of multiple Boston police officers, thereby providing a cohesive narrative anchor.
While the film employs dramatic license for specific dialogues and personal interactions, it adheres closely to the established factual timeline of the crisis, from the bombing at the finish line to the final standoff in Watertown, Massachusetts. The production integrates actual archival news reports and surveillance footage to ground the dramatization in reality. Therefore, the film is a historical dramatization that prioritizes factual accuracy in its depiction of the event while using conventional cinematic techniques to tell a compelling story.
