Review: Stronger

Stronger
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. David Gordon Green / Trailer



You'd think I'd be happier about this. Being a curmudgeon of monumental dimensions, I usually berate the December/January-scheduled, über-worthy, awards-bothering, true-story releases for being excessively mawkish and exploitative, for expecting an audience to wistfully grip a tissue in their quivering hands for every minute of the run-time, for wringing the earnest, soul-wrenching drama from every last calculated frame of celluloid.

Stronger doesn't go to those lengths. And I'm not happier about this because Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany and Miranda Richardson are acting their thespic socks off while screenwriter John Pollono and director David Gordon Green apparently don't care. This is the story of Massachusetts production-worker Jeff Bauman, a spectator at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon when an explosive device was detonated next to him*¹, resulting in the loss of his legs. The film isn't so much about the event itself as Bauman's struggle to get back into the world, to be the inspiration that people assumed him to be even before he was ready for that mantle.

Well, it should be about that, at least. Instead we get more of a fleeting docu-drama filled with unlikeable characters and a dearth of mechanical detail*². Given how dramatic the first act is out of necessity, the film we have is oddly bereft of emotion. Not quite clinical, but anaesthetised certainly. A short setup takes us to the day of the marathon*³, breezes over the immediate aftermath, skips out completely on the six weeks of in-hospital rehab, then just drifts along with snapshots of Jeff's recouperation. We get glimpses into the recovery, but never really enough to emotionally invest in the character (a real actual person, don't forget). Dramatic outbursts and flashes of PTSD come as much of a surprise to the audience as they do to the characters surrounding Jeff, almost suggesting that we're not being told the story from his point of view in the first place. Which is odd because the only other main character is his partner Erin, doing her best to help Jeff's rehabilitation*⁴, but we don't really see the film from her point of view either.

The central performances are, as noted, solid enough, but the writing isn't there to back them up. And while Gyllenhaal is one of the finest actors of his generation, it feels like this part (certainly as it's written) isn't complex enough for Jake to represent good value for money*⁵. There's the feeling that rather than present Bauman as a challenging/conflicted character, the screenplay just doesn't particularly like him*⁶, which becomes a waste of a great performer. Mark McMark could play this role. There moments of dark humour in the film, genuinely funny for all the right reasons, but they're too sporadic to be classed as an actual feature of the script. A tale of redemption should be a rollercoaster, this is like being pulled over waste-ground in a cart with wooden wheels for an hour and a half, before…

And then, around twenty minutes from the end of the movie, Jeff resigns himself to meeting a man named Carlos in a bar. It's Carlos who pulled Jeff out of the carnage in Boston, who tourniquet'd his legs to stop him bleeding to death, who reassured the semi-conscious man that help was on its way. Carlos has his own backstory of course, and this could be the one genuine scene in the whole two hours. Everything after this point is absolutely fine, the movie I was expecting it to be throughout (which is to say it's overly-sentimental, but the details of the plot have earned it by that point). But it's too little, too late. You can't just fill the screen with sports-fans waving Stars and Stripes flags and call that a happy ending. No really, you can't.

The usual rules apply for this sort of thing: You want to honour survivors of an ordeal, film-makers? Then take a film crew to their house and get the base-footage for a documentary...

This Sort Of Thing™.



While Stronger isn't exactly televisual, it's not particularly cinematic either.



Nowhere near as much as it would like, I suspect.



It's not.



I shouldn't think so.



There isn't.
Not even when the bomb goes off.



Level 1: Savage Opress is in this.



And it's only the last twenty minutes which lift it up that far.


*⁰ If you're at this first footnote because of the asterisk in the 'post description' on social media (and for the sake of HTML coding, let's call this *⁰), I put "Boston Strongler" in there because even I didn't think I'd get away with "Marathon Man(gled)". Who says I'm not a sensitive guy?

*¹ Now you would think they'd have done a shared-cinematic-universe thing and given a cameo to Mark McMark, to tie in with last year's Patriots Day, but apparently not. Normally I'd insert a link to my review of the film there, but since I refused to watch Patriots Day as it looked like 90 minutes of histrionic flag-waving, I can't do that. You're right, maybe I'm not a sensitive guy… ^{[ BACK ]}

*² It's quite a feat that in a movie full of aimless self-centred drifters, that the HR policy of the Costco corporation comes out looking like the good guy. I'm assuming the blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to a health insurance claim for an underperforming, low-grade 'poultry-technician' is what paid for his robot legs, the likes of which are normally reserved for military veterans. Because the film doesn't explain it otherwise. Jeff comes out of hospital to live in his mum's flat in the housing projects, and the extra financial burden on a woman who's already not working just isn't mentioned. And while I'm on, in one scene he's been out of the hospital for weeks and nobody's thought that a guy with no legs might have trouble reaching the toilet-roll which is kept on the opposite side of the bathroom from the toilet. Jeff's family are dicks in this. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Really though, Jeff's on/off girlfriend Erin is running a full marathon and leaves getting sponsorship until the day before. Then she does this by going to a pub and sitting down, and has the temerity to call him lacklustre in his commitments... ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ By the way, if you're unfamiliar with the phrase "Boston strong" (*raises hand*), I advise you to look it up before watching the this. The second-act is in love with the phrase, but not to the point where it actually explains the etymology of it. Jeff's surname isn't Strong, and at that point in the story he's displayed few actual signs of endurance other than being interviewed repeatedly on TV (or so we're told, that's another thing the film doesn't bother showing us). Anyway, apparently it just means that the people of Boston are strong. Which is fair enough, but here in the UK we got news reports about the bombing itself, but the rest of this awful world quickly filled the follow-up schedules. What I'm saying is, don't @ me for not knowing what the hell 'Boston Strong' meant. I'm a sensitive guy. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Seriously though, not to demean the actual Jeff Bauman's struggle at all, but Stronger's approach to post-traumatic stress disorder is much like that of American Sniper: 1) Lead character is sad and angry for a bit, 2) Lead character shouts for a bit, 3) Lead character is reflective for a bit, 4) Yay, lead character is better now! That's all he had to do all along!! ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁶ There's a lot of consequence-free alcohol/medication mixing going on in this movie. As well as the drunk-driving scene which has no comeback. And apparently losing your legs means never having to wear a seatbelt, somehow. If anyone is thinking of looking to this movie as a source of inspirational reference, they're going to take away the message that it's okay to be a complete tool for as long as you want. The bizarre thing is that when photos of the real, actual Jeff Bauman appear in the obligatory credits-montage, I was thinking "funny, he doesn't look like the dick that Jake's just made him out to be". Who knew? ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.