“Stronger,” February 10, 2018 (2017), DVD in St. Paul on computer. Costco chicken cooker Jeff Bauman (an excellent and balanced Jake Gyllenhal, who also co-produced). was waiting at the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013 when the bombs went off and took both his legs above the knee. He was there to root for and, he hoped, win back his ex-girlfriend, Erin Hurley (Tatiana Maslaney, of “Orphan Black” fame). Saved by quick thinking medical staff and Carlos Arredondo (the man in the cowboy hat), he awoke in the hospital. How does one respond to this immense and horrific change?. Bauman was your nice, everyday, rather irresponsible guy from a dysfunctional, hard drinking Irish family and community in Chelmsford, MA. His mother Patty (a wonderful Miranda Richardson) reminded me of Melissa Leo in “The Fighter,” full of her own agenda of recovery, trying to help, compromised by her own drinking, and perversely basking in his celebrity. Hurley must make her own choices. Locals, including comic Lenny Clark in great form as Uncle Bob—he’s known him for years—act in this film along with outside pros, and it’s all shot in the Boston area It includes the surgeon who saved his life but had to amputate and the craftsmen who created his prostheses. The idea that he is testimony about patriotic resistance to “the terrorists” is not the point of the film, even as locals praise him on that basis in the movie. It is much more meaningful and personal. The moral center of the film is Carlos Arredondo (Carlos Sanz) who I’ve met and interviewed several times over the years in relation to his anti-war work, who rushed towards rather than away from the carnage. Their meeting is the transformative moment. This is a vastly more important, intimate, and meaningful film than the mediocre “Patriot’s Day” with Mark Whalburg. Although some have criticized the film’s ‘predictable’ story arc, there’s a courageous openness about the movie, as Bauman, who initially wonders why people view him as and call him a hero because he survived, became stronger despite this catastrophe and lets us see the good and the ugly.