The Boston Marathon bombing was a defining moment in the history of the city of Boston. For that reason there’s little surprise that there are two films trying to capture the emotion of the experience. One of them is Mark Wahlberg’s Patriot’s Day. While recreating the events of such a terrible day would be an emotional experience on their own, for one key moment the film has decided to go one step further and actually re-enact an event. Boston Red Sox player David Ortiz will be appearing in the film in order to give the same speech he gave at Fenway Park after the perpetrators were caught.
Peter Berg's Patriot’s Day is trying to be as true to life as possible. It will include actual news footage as B-roll during the film, though much of the movie has been shot on aircraft hanger rather than the streets of Boston. This was done out of sensitivity to Bostonians who weren’t ready to publicly recreate the traumatic event. For one scene, however, only the real thing will do. According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Ortiz will be going to South Weymouth Naval Air Station, the film’s shooting location, to recreate the speech he gave in front of an assembled baseball crowd. The moment went viral, mostly due to Ortiz dropping an F-bomb on the mic, proclaiming to the crowd "This is our fucking city."
The moment was such an emotional one that even the usually strict FCC let it go without imposing a fine. For a couple of weeks in 2013 it seemed everybody in America felt like they were from Boston. Seeing the David Ortiz speech in the film is sure to be a major emotional moment for those who were watching when it happened. The event was so important, and is still so fresh in people’s minds, that they likely decided that hiring an actor to play David Ortiz just wasn’t going to do the job properly. Anybody other than Big Papi won’t be able to bring the emotional weight to those words. You can listen to the speech below and hear how the crowd responds to him.
Time will tell if a recreation of the event will be the same sort of emotional experience that the original speech was. Patriot’s Day is set for release this December 21.
