13 Critically Acclaimed Recent Movies That Actually Sucked
5. Patriots Day
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81% (6.8/10)
What The Critics Said: Peter Berg's second docudrama of last year (following the surprisingly solid Deepwater Horizon), Patriots Day may have fallen short of the expected Oscar hype, but it nevertheless earned solid notices for the ensemble cast and presenting the drama of a recent tragedy in unexpectedly tasteful fashion.
Why It Actually Sucked: Even excusing the debate about whether or not Hollywood really needed to make a movie about the Boston Marathon bombings, especially so soon after the fact, Patriots Day suffocates any intriguing insight into the event beneath an over-abundance of melodramatic subplots intended to make the film appeal to more casual audiences (that is, flag-waving middle-Americans).
The cast is fine, sure, but J.K. Simmons, John Goodman and Michelle Monaghan don't get anywhere near enough to do. The whole enterprise feels weirdly exploitative in its lack of necessity, and when it's not busy functioning as a propaganda piece, it's simply cheesy as Hell.