Every once in a while, Hollywood likes to pretend they have an imagination and casts someone “untraditional” for a very traditional part. Typically, those ideas are terrible (Zoe Saldana in Nina comes to mind) so I guess it’s refreshing to see that Boston native Casey Affleck has been cast in Boston Strong, the latest Boston Marathon movie. No word yet on what part he’ll play, but I’m sure everyone will have to turn their closed captioning on regardless, since Boston vowels are the worst.
Affleck attended the same high school, Cambridge Rindge and Latin, as the two shooters, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev [Editor’s Note: “Rindge” is nawt a typo, I was surprised to learn]. The movie itself is based on the book by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, subtly titled Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph Over Tragedy. While I’m a little underwhelmed by the movie and book title (how strong can a city be where the average BMI is 2?), I’m confident in the two writers behind the project, Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy, who also wrote The Fighter. It’ll be interesting to see how they introduce nuance in a story that so seamlessly pits terrorist against victim, criminal against cop, good against evil.
According to The Hollywood Reporter,
“The expression “Boston Strong” became shorthand for describing the way the city dealt with the attack. However, it became so popular — emblazoned on athletic wear and associated with the local sports teams — that some found that its overuse belittled the suffering of the victims, including dozens of amputees.”
I have purposely chosen to live very far away from Boston for many excellent reasons, but I can completely see how this happened. As a New Yorker, nothing annoys more than to hear about how ‘resilient’ people were after 9/11, or ‘how we really pulled together.’ Forgive me, but I’m pretty sure that cleaning up trash and making soup can donations is the baseline of human compassion everyone should expect after a tragedy. No city is stronger than any other – we are all equally flabby. To expect everyone who suffered amputations to rise up and run alterna-marathons is unfair to the people who still want to cry about it.
No release date on this movie I will probably not see.