Mark Whalberg stars as a composite of many Boston police officers (Irish to the core) when the Patriots’ Day Marathon bombing took three lives. Other actors play real people, the police Commissioner, Governor Deval Patrick, the young man who the bombers carjack, the bombers and the wife of the elder brother, the MIT cop they murdered, the younger brother’s college roommates, the Watertown desk sergeant who battled the Tsarnaev brothers. It follows all the characters, including some of the victim and takes it all the way to the capture of the younger brother and David Ortiz’s speech. John Goodman as the Commissioner and JK Simmons as the Watertown desk sergeant who rises to a crisis seem wasted. Nice follow up on several of the real folks. Ok portrayal of the complete collapse of command and control in several instances, of the lack of discipline shown by cops from way too many units. It glorifies the overkill of the city-wide shelter in place order. Sadly, Carlos Arredondo is not included in this picture, perhaps because he is both a hero of the day who ran towards the bomb blast and saved at least one man’s life and because he is an explicitly anti-war activist. It also is a Hollywoodized vision of huge car explosions that didn’t happen. Most significantly, however, there is no there inside the bombers’ minds. They are simply brutes, as with the older brother, or a stupid adolescent, stoner, gamer follower, his slacker brother. We learn nothing about them of substance Perhaps that’s too much to ask in these times and especially from a film like this, whose purpose is to honor the victims of the bombing, the cops who tracked these amateur murderous terrorists down, and the city of Boston itself. But it does nothing to further a meaningful conversation.