Stronger (2017) (15)
Rating:3/5 - worth watching
Synopsis
Based on a real-life story, Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a typical young working class lad, stuck in a low-pay supermarket job, going to the pub with his heavy drinking family and friends and giving his long-suffering, on-off, middle class girlfriend Erin (Tatiana Maslany) the run around.
As a ruse to get back together with her after another breakup, he finally shows up to something she is doing – running in the 2013 Boston Marathon. After a terrorist plants a bomb there, spectators die and Jeff loses both his legs. An already recalcitrant man becomes increasingly difficult to live with.
Review, by Jason Day
Such TV-movie infirmity of the week staples like Jane Seymour and Patti Duke have been replaced with high (higher) calibre acting fare liujke Gyllenhaal and Miranda Richardson in this piquant, topical story about the terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon of 2013.
But we now live in politically different times and their lightweight, dramatical puff no longer helps detail the human condition in a post-9/11 world.
Gyllenhaal can convince us of a man's inner torment with the mere glint of an eye and Maslany, as the love interest cast into ominousness by the character he portrays, do a great job in telling us about the raw emotion when the fit and able are struck down.
Do we get anything else from what Seymour et al yelped at us before? Read the full review for more: http://bit.ly/StrongerFilm2017
Cast & credits
Director: David Gordon Green. 1hr 59mins. Bold Films/Lionsgate/Mandeville/Nine Stories Productions. (15)
Producer: Jake Gyllenhaal, David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, Michel Litvak, Scott Silver.
Writer: John Pollono.
Camera: Sean Bobbitt.
Music: Michael Brook.
Sets: Stephen H. Carter.
Jake Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany, Miranda Richardson, Richard Lane Jr., Nate Richman, Lenny Clarke, Patty O’Neill, Clancy Brown, Kate Fitzgerald.
Pic: Courtesy of Lionsgate
