Yes, the 2016 film Patriots Day is based on a true story. It dramatizes the events of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent four-day manhunt for the perpetrators. The film's narrative is adapted from the non-fiction book Boston Strong: A City's Triumph Over Tragedy by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge, which provides a detailed account of the terrorist attack and its aftermath.
The movie meticulously reconstructs the timeline of the actual events, beginning with the detonation of two pressure cooker bombs near the marathon's finish line on April 15, 2013. It follows the intensive investigation led by the FBI and various local law enforcement agencies to identify the suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Key factual events depicted include the murder of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, a carjacking in Cambridge, the violent shootout between the brothers and police in Watertown, and the final capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Many characters in the film are portrayals of real people, including Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers, and Watertown Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese. However, the central protagonist, Sergeant Tommy Saunders (played by Mark Wahlberg), is a fictional composite character created to synthesize the experiences of multiple Boston police officers and provide a cohesive narrative viewpoint for the audience.
While Patriots Day is a dramatization that employs cinematic techniques for storytelling, it is widely regarded as a historically faithful depiction of the tragedy and the response. The filmmakers conducted extensive research and consulted with many of the real-life individuals involved. The use of a composite main character is the most significant departure from a strictly documentary approach, a narrative device used to streamline the complex, multi-agency investigation into a comprehensible film plot. The movie concludes with documentary footage and interviews with the actual survivors, officials, and heroes of the event, reinforcing its foundation in reality.
